


The Paradox of War and Other Drabbles

by aadarshinah



Series: Tales From The Ancient!John 'verse [1]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Ancient John Sheppard, Drabble Collection, F/M, M/M, Sentient Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 61
Words: 38,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various Drabbles in the Ancient!John 'verse, posted in the order they are written</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Paradox of War

**Author's Note:**

> "The paradox of war is that those leaders who are most willing to endanger that which they love can be the ones most liable to win, and therefore most likely to protect their men."  
> Dave Grossman's On Killing  
> \- - -  
> Takes place at any point after "Pastor" but before "Liberator"

Rodney never falls in love with John Sheppard, the Pegasus galaxy native who'd been shanghaied into becoming their military leader. He's seen that John shoot down pursuing Wraith with such cool efficiency that it was impossible to forget that he'd spent his entire life as a solider in a war his people had eventually lost. It's a frightening thing and, sometimes, it's hard to forget that that look could have just as easily been turned on them if he'd determined the Expedition had been a threat to Atlantis. The Marines, when they see it (or, more specifically, the alien bloodshed that comes with it), immediately decide they like having an Ancient as their commanding officer and adopt him into their military, calling him Major Sheppard and complaining good-naturedly that his skills are wasted as a pilot, even if he is a damned good one.

Major John Sheppard is a hard man. Not cold or cruel or heart-less, as some of the Expedition seems to think, though he creates the persona of being too calm, too cool, too causal to truly care about the lives of the Terran descendants who populate his city. He smiles at them in hallways. He grieves with them when the lives of their colleagues are lost. He appears not to know them as anything more than faces, with names and titles – and, if they're lucky, a skill set or two.

But Major John Sheppard is not a real man.

He knows this. He'd been the one to find him in the first place, bleeding to death in the Control Chair.

Still, its hard to remember that John isn't John, that there is no John, that John's just something an Ancient named Iohannes Ianidedus Licinus Pastor has chosen to answer to, even if it's Iohannes who he watches old SyFy with late into the night, and Iohannes who brings him coffee when he works too long in his lab, and Iohannes he's fallen in love with.


	2. Suit of White

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Well, there's things that never will be right I know,  
> And things need changin' everywhere you go,  
> But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,  
> You'll never see me wear a suit of white."  
> Johnny Cash "Man in Black"  
> \- - -  
> Set on Atlantis after "Heres" but before "Dei et Viri," just before the episode "Duet" picks up.

"Y'know," Lieutenant Cadman tells him as they're getting ready to step through the porta for a world rumour has it has been recently culled. They're hoping to find survivors from the descendant population there; people who can tell them how many darts came, how many they took, and how long they were there. It's not as good as sneaking aboard a Wraith hive and stealing information on their troop movements and numbers, but they've been able to maintain the fiction that they'd destroyed Atlantis rather than let the Wraith get their hands on it for almost four months now and doing something so blatant would give them away for certain, "if the goal is to remain hidden, shouldn't we be flying under false colours or something here?"

"False colours?" he asks. There are thousands of idioms in the Terran language of English. He's picked up a lot, and Atlantis has updated his translation matrix to include several of Expedition members' native tongues, but he's not heard this one before.

"Like not wearing the Expedition uniform when we go off-world. Something Athosian, maybe." She wrinkles her nose, perhaps thinking costumes like Teyla's would be difficult to hide body armour under, "Or Ancient. I bet no one would mess with us if we were dressed up like Ancients."

Iohannes considers this for a moment. One could at least hide a Kevlar vest underneath the elaborate outfits some of his people had worn, but, "Impractical," he decides in the end.

"Yeah. I guess it'd be pretty hard to make P90s and M249s look like Ancient energy weapons."

"That too."

"Why? White not your colour sir?"

"Not exactly, no." It's actually the laces he's thinking about – the elaborate ties down the back of the ribbed brigandines and heavy leather vambraces that were part of the standard guardsmen'suniform. Tying (and especially untying them) was impossible to do with any alacrity. Several career military, like himself, rarely bothered removing the vambraces at all during the Siege, the quicker to get into uniform should the Wraith suddenly decide to attack.

They're standing at the foot of the Control Room stairs, he and Cadman, with a couple other Marines as they wait for the rest of their away team – primarily Rodney and Carson, who Elizabeta has insisted on talking to right before they're set to leave. Major Lorne, however, is really the only one close enough to overhear their conversation, and snorts at the last.

Cadman just laughs. "You do pull off the whole man in black thing fairly well. Sir."

"Don't know that one either."

She looks confused for a moment, pausing in the middle of retying her hair before answering. "No, it's not a metaphor. It's Johnny Cash. I brought some of his music with me – you can borrow it if you like after the mission. Y'know, if none of us wind up in the infirmary after."

Iohannes nods non-committally. Other members of the Expedition have tried introducing him to Terran music, but he's discovered that after so many years of listening to Atlantis and her never-ending song that nothing else sounds quite right. Not even the classical artists that Rodney had tried introducing him to.

"I wouldn't have pegged you for a country music fan, Lieutenant," Lorne says.

She shrugs, settling her hat back on her head. "I shared an apartment with a girl from Nashville for a while. It was either learn to like it or go mad, and I figured a disappearing roommate wouldn't look good on my service record, so..."

Before she really has a chance to continue, the rest of their team joins them, and then Chuck's dialling the gate and, well, that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brigandine is a type of armour that is usually made up of old bits of plate armour rivioted onto leather, so it's a bit like a bulletproof best. In all techicality, the clothing the Ancients on the Aurora wear in that episode are probably jacks of coats, which are exactly like brigadines except the armour is sewn into fabric rather than rivoted, but jack of coat sounded less Ancient than brigadine, so...


	3. Nothing Collapses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...the smallest sprout shows there is really no death,  
> and if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,  
> and ceas'd the moment life appear'd.  
> All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,  
> and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
> 
> Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"  
> \- - -  
> Takes place between parts 2 & 3 of the "Dei et Viri" arc. Ie, the episode "Trinity"

The Terran medics take the bodies from the auxiliary control room and move them to the infirmary. With the five they found at the outpost, it means there are twelve of his people in body-bags throughout the room. Iohannes also takes this to mean that four people, not counting himself, left the control room alive that day so long ago, to go with the others through the porta to Terra. They probably Ascended too, and are still out there, somewhere, in some form. He probably even spoke to them, or something, during the three minutes he was Ascended before Colonel Everett and his team arrived.

Somehow, that makes things a little better.

Still, the difference between the bodies they found at the Dorandan outpost and the ones discovered on Atlantis is striking. The first show every bit of their age and are identifiable only by the names on their pendants. But the others...

The one's from the auxiliary control room are perfectly preserved, looking almost exactly as he left them, like they can't have been dead for even twenty-eight hours. It hurts, seeing them like this, but less somehow than seeing the group from Project Arcturus.

Iohannes is standing by Nicolaa's body, thinking just this, when Rodney storms in.

"Why," he accuses from across the room as he enters, "do I have to hear from Katie Brown of all people that you're in the infirmary?"

"I'm fine," he says, getting sick and tired of having to tell people – Carson, Doctor Heightmeyer, and various medical attachés – this as he looks up. "And why were you talking to Katie Brown? I thought you were still avoiding her after the Cadman Incident."

(The Cadman Incident is what they call the unpleasant week where Lieutenant Cadman's consciousness had cohabited Rodney's body following their botched removal from a Wraith dart, in which the most uncomfortable part was, by far, Cadman's misinterpretation of a dinner and biology department review as a date. Katie, thankfully, was very understanding about the whole matter, and that – and the fact that Cadman really is extraordinarily good at her job – is the only reason Iohannes hasn't asked the Lieutenant to pack her bags for the Daedalus' return journey.)

Rodney harrumphs, recrossing his arms and lingering by the door. His eyes, however, don't hold the agitation the rest of his stance projects, and examine Iohannes quite thoroughly as he replies, "It's not as easy as you'd think, even if the size of the Expedition has increased tenfold. But, in this case, she tracked me down, wanting to know what sort of flowers to send you. I told her giving you flowers would probably send you into some sort of existential crisis while you tried to figure out what she meant by them, and then asked why she'd want to give you flowers in the first place. Lo and behold, I discover that you've gotten yourself sent to the infirmary – again – and no one's bothered to tell me. I'm temped to say something disparaging about the American Uniform Code and how, if you'd decided to join a civilized nation's military, I could actually be listed as your emergency contact without eyebrows being raised, but, one, Carson knows better and, two, you actually do appear to be fine, so..." Rodney uncrosses his arms and moves to join him next to Nicolaa's gurney. "What happened to her?"

Nicolaa is unnaturally pale – she was always fair, but in death her skin is almost translucent from the blood-loss she suffered when the window on the other side of her console had shattered. Shards of glass are still embedded up and down her entire right side, and the blood staining her brigandine and matting her hair is only just starting to dry. "A Wraith dart hit the tower she was working in."

"What? When was this?" he sounds startled, hand starting to go to his radio.

"About ten thousand, two hundred and four-and-a-half years ago."

"Ah," Rodney says, hand falling back to his side somewhat sheepishly.

There's something about his silence that makes Iohannes need to talk, to explain why he's here rather than letting the medics take care of it all. But the only words he has are, "Her name is Nicolaa de Luera Pastor."

Rodney, at least, understands what it is to be pastor, to be custodia, and nods. "And the scientist you were talking about earlier? Who was he?"

"Andeo Mael-"

"-Forcul, yes, you said. But who was he? To you, I mean. Because I like to think, no matter how much you've got the others fooled, I know you, and know that there's more to this Forcul than his being just one of your father's colleague's."


	4. From Across the Distant Shore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Lay Down  
> Your sweet and weary head.  
> Night’s falling,  
> You have come to journey's end.  
> Sleep now.  
> Dream of the ones who came before.  
> They are calling  
> From across a distant shore."
> 
> Annie Lennox “Into the West”  
> \- - -
> 
> Takes place immediately followling "Dei et Viri" and before "Socii." Ie, the end of "Trinity"

"John!" he says as the planet begins to shake underneath them, "John! C'mon, snap out of it. We've got to get out of here."

John, however, doesn't give any sign he's heard him, just continues to lie on the floor, eyes closed in concentration as he remains uplinked to the Dorandan outpost. Rodney's not even sure he can break the data-link with the weapon going into catastrophic failure, and so doesn't waste time trying, just starts to stand and make for the jumper controls to fly them out of here himself, 'cause, if they don't get out of here soon, they're going to be just as toast as the rest of this planet – and quite possibly this system – are going to be in a few minutes.

Which, of course, is when Rodney's knocked off his feet, by the jumper starting to fly them off the planet of it's own accord. Which is more than a little odd considering the jumper's don't have autopilots, and, even if they did, they wouldn't be pulling manoeuvres like these, which were almost too fast for the inertial dampeners to compensate.

"John?" he asks, shaking his shoulder after he's managed right himself (and discovered that, yes, the floor of the jumpers are just as hard as you might expect). There's no response, prompting him to mutter, "Great, even unconscious you can fly this thing better than I can," before continuing more loudly as he makes for the front of the jumper, "Head for the gate. It's the only way we're going to get out of here fast enough."

If he was still capable of being surprised by anything in the Pegasus galaxy at this point, he would've been when the jumper immediately starts it's run for the gate, barely giving him time to dial – and warn Atlantis they were coming in hot – before they're passing through the event horizon.


	5. Complexities or Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney likes to play the what if...? game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
> I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride.  
> So I love you because I know no other way than this..."
> 
> Pablo Neurda "XVII"  
> \- - -   
> Takes place, chronologically, at any point after "Socors"

Once, in the early days of their relationship, Rodney had asked him what he would have done if his plan hadn't worked.

"What d'you mean?" Iohannes had asked in return, sleepy and sated and trying to bury his face further into the crook of Rodney's neck.

"I mean, what if the others had found you before you got to the Chair Room? What would you have done if you'd been forced to go back to Earth with them?"

"That wouldn't have happened. 'Lantis was keeping an eye out for me."

He didn't have to see Rodney's face to know he was rolling his eyes. "Yes, yes, but what if?"

With a groan, Iohannes had pulled away from Rodney's warmth to look at him blearily. One of the most annoying things about the Terran was that his post-coital haze lasted for all of about sixty seconds, after which he went back to being his normal self. Not that Iohannes didn't like Rodney's normal self, he'd just have preferred another five minutes of basking in the afterglow before the conversation restarted, particularly when it involved talking about his life before the Exodus. Luckily however, most the time it was more along the lines of So, what did you think of that Star Trek episode? or Guess how my idiot subordinates tried to kill us this morning. Still, the time after sex was supposed to be spent, oh, he didn't know, cuddling, not talking about possible alternative histories, particularly ones that meant the two involved in said discussion would never have met.

"Father's eminentia said something about trying to find a way back to Atlantis. I guess I probably would've helped him with that."

Rodney had nodded like this was expected. And maybe this was. "What about the rest of the time?"

"Rest of the time?"

"When you weren't working on trying to come back. I mean," he'd asked, voice strangely light, "would you have settled down, had a family, or would you have been two hermits in the middle of the wilderness somewhere, or what?"

"I dunno. I never really gave much thought to settling down with anyone 'til I met you, so whatever Father would've wanted, I guess. Why?"

Rodney had made a brief choking noise at this, and dipped into a silence so long that Iohannes thought he'd drifted off to sleep and tried to do the same.

He was only being honest, but he thinks by the way Rodney acts afterwards that, if the other man had ever had doubts about their relationship, they were gone after that. It makes Iohannes want to track down everyone who'd ever hurt his amator and teach them a lesson once he realizes this, but he settles for saving the last muffin for him at breakfast the next morning. He's not certain, but he thinks Rodney would appreciate this sentiment better anyway.


	6. Less For His Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan uses Sheppard's office more than he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it."
> 
> Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope  
> \- - -  
> Takes place midway through part 2 of "Socii" or so.

"So," Sheppard asks, dragging a chair over from across the room, "how do I go about promoting Lieutenant Cadman?"

Evan looks up from his paperwork, surprised. The surprise isn't so much because of Sheppard wanting to promote Laura – with the minor exception of her actions while sharing Doctor McKay's body, the Colonel's been nothing but glowing in his praise for the Marine – but because of his presence. Granted, Evan has set up his own desk in the outer room of Sheppard's offices, but he's never actually seen the other man in them before now. Which is saying something, as Evan sometimes feels he lives in this room whenever he's not off-world, doing paperwork and whatnot that his CO can't be bothered to do. Not that he's complaining. It's the same mess he'd have to do at any duty station, but here at least he gets a window and a hell of view while doing it.

But, still, he has to ask, "You want to promote her? Might be hard, considering she just shot Colonel Caldwell."

"He had a goa'uld in him," Sheppard says casually, literally waving the question off as he straddles his chair. "He'll be fine. 'Sides, that's one of the reasons I want her promoted. Shooting a superior officer? It takes chutzpah."

"Chutzpah," he repeats disbelievingly.

"Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, Lieutenant Pritchard is a good guy, but I think 'Lantis would stand a better chance if something happened to us and Cadman was third-in-command instead of Pritchard. She loves Atlantis, is decent with people, and is willing to do what's necessary to protect them both, which is what we need at the moment."

"I wasn't arguing with you," Evan says, shifting in his chair. "I just want to know where you picked up a work like chutzpah."

"You'll be surprised what you can learn when people don't think you can understand them," the Ancient says obliquely, barely managing to keep a sly grin off his face. "So, you agree."

"Completely, though I'm not sure she has the time-in-grade to qualify for captain. I'll have to look that up..." He starts to do just that, pulling up the records they'll need on his computer, when a thought strikes him. "This mean if shoot you, I'll get a promotion too?"

The Colonel actually appears to think about it. Then, "You're a good officer, good at what you do, and, more importantly, 'Lantis likes you. Despite that, though, I don't think they'll let me keep you if we're both lieutenant colonels, so you'll just have to wait until they get around to making me full colonel to get that next promotion. That going to be a problem?"

Evan blinks at this. "Er, no sir?" he says somewhat dazedly, 'cause, really, what else is there he can say? Atlantis is the posting of a lifetime, and if Sheppard's willing to go to lengths to keep him here, well, he's not going to argue, particularly if it puts him on the career fast-track. Though, when it comes to Atlantis, he'd almost be willing to be bumped back down to lieutenant himself if it means he'd get to keep this post.

Sheppard just grins at him, as if he knows exactly what Evan's thinking, and raps his knuckles on a bare patch of desk. "Don't worry, Major: I've got plans for you. First, though, let's get Lieutenant Cadman squared away. Okay?"


	7. And The Heavens Above

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Asgard visit Atlantis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Earth shall be rent, and the heavens above."
> 
> TheSkarpåker Stone  
> \- - -  
> Set between chapter 2 & 3 of "Socii"

"Hey guys," John says, taking the Gate Room stairs two at a time. "Glad you could make it."

"Glad you could make it?" Rodney repeats, scrambling out of his seat and down the steps after him, 'cause, seriously, he wasn't entirely sure his mind wasn't playing tricks on him. What would the Asgard want with Atlantis? And, better yet, what why John have invited them here, when Lantea was pretty much on the opposite end of the known universe from their homeworld?

John, naturally, chooses to ignore him and continues, "I didn't think you guys would show up for months yet. Also kinda figured you'd call ahead, give us some advanced warning or something. But, nevermind. We've got tonnes of room if you want us to set you up down here, if not, your ship's welcome to stay in orbit or set down on the north pier."

"Although your offer of hospitality is appreciated, we would prefer to get started right away," says one of the Asgard, the one standing in between and slightly in front of the other two.

"Sure thing." John says, a massive grin on his face as he turns around. "Rodney, mind seeing if Lorne's gotten section seventy-three checked out yet?"

"Seventy-three?" That section's on the far end of the east pier, right near the water, where the expedition hasn't ventured save to do more than a cursory damage check following the Storm and the Siege respectively. It doesn't break the top fifty of things to see on Atlantis before you die and is probably not high on Lorne's check for goa'uld sabotage list either. "What's in seventy-three?"

"A lab I told Hermiod the Asgard could borrow. This is Doctor McKay, our head scientist, by the way" he says, turning back to face the Asgard, "and I'm Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor, military commander of Atlantis. But you probably already knew that."

"Indeed," says one of the Asgard.

"Yes, yes," Rodney says, not caring whatever or whomever it is he might be interrupting, "but why are they here?"

John just flashes him that almost-manic grin again and announces, "To save the Asgard race, of course."


	8. What You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's like mommy and daddy are fighting, except no one thinks of John and Elizabeth that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Have you so little faith in your own people? Yes, there is weakness. There is frailty. But there is courage also, and honour to be found in Men. But you will not see that. You are afraid! All your life, you have hidden in the shadows. Scared of who you are, of what you are."
> 
> The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring  
> \- - -   
> Another bit between parts 2 & 3 of the "Socii" arc

Elizabeth's not the kind of person who generally shouts when she's angry. She's usually the quiet type, radiating an intense energy of disapproval and disavowal that's usually somehow worse than the harshest dressing down. Which wasn't to say there aren't exceptions – why, just last week she'd been yelling at him for the whole Doranda incident – but they were few and far between, and usually relegated to situations that could have meant death for those involved.

Which is probably why there are so many people hovering in the Control Room, all trying not to look like they're only there to listen in to the shouting match going on behind the Conference Room's closed doors.

"...something like this?" Elizabeth shouts, and Rodney can just imagine her pushing herself out of whatever seat she'd taken at the table, hands resting in fists on the wood as she finally stops trying to hide her acrimony.

He can just as easily imagine that John's been standing the entire time, staring at her a little too intensely while Elizabeth speaks her part. Then, voice like steel, "They needed help."

"That's not the point."

"Then what, Elizabeta, is?"

"The point is, Colonel, that you cannot just invite the Asgard to Atlantis without telling anyone."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because," Elizabeth says, her voice going icy, "you don't get to make those kind of decisions."

There's practically a draft as everyone in the Control Room sucks in their breaths at John's, "Somebody has to."

"Yes. It's the SGC's job, not yours."

"And let it be talked to death in some underground office? This is the survival of the Asgard race we're talking about here, not some petty trade agreement."

"I'm sure they would've-"

But the thing is, stubbornness is endemic to Atlantis. They're all too ornery for their own good – John with his need to protect Atlantis and her inhabitants, Elizabeth with her own particular brand of inflexible morality, and Rodney himself with, well, a very large list of his own – and it causes clashes like this, when they do happen, to be so much worse than they need to be.

"No," John interrupts, and Rodney can just imagine the expression on Elizabeth's face (which, though it's only imagined, is almost enough to make him cringe, even sitting as he is on the Gate Room steps, waiting for it all to be over), "they wouldn't've. They would've milked the situation for all the concessions they could get – as if the Asgard haven't given you more tech than you lot were ready for anyway. And, by then, it wouldn't have mattered because it would've been too little, too late."

"John-" Elizabeth tries again, her voice softer now, and Rodney has to wonder if he's the only one outside the Conference Room who hears it at all.

But John doesn't let her continue. "'Cause that's what this is all about, isn't it? The fact that you lot seem to think Atlantis is your secret weapon, like it will save you from all the enemies you've made for yourselves. The Goa'uld, the Wraith, the Ori. But it doesn't work that way. Technology doesn't make you invincible – it just gives you more ways to screw yourselves over."

There's a scramble after this, as the doors to the Conference Room tilt open and everyone tries to look like they weren't hanging on every word that they'd been able to hear. Not that it matters in the end. John just stomps off, ducking through a door that had looked and acted like a perfectly normal wall for the last eighteen months without even appearing to notice anyone else was around to see him. Which probably meant he'd seen every single one of them and couldn't stand to face any of them at the moment, not even Rodney.

The Control Room's silent for a long time, enough so that Rodney's footsteps almost seem to echo as he hauls himself to his feet and into the half-emptied Conference Room. If John doesn't want to deal with him right now, fine, but first thing's first-

"It's not you," he tells Elizabeth, waiting until he's standing almost beside her. He can be oblivious sometimes, but even he knows how much worse Elizabeth would feel if she knew all the eavesdroppers had overheard this too. "That he has a problem with, I mean."

"I know," she says softly, and Rodney leaves before he has to pretend not to see her like this, all quiet and broken and half of herself for the second time that day.


	9. Lost Engagements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Terrans call Atlantis The Lost City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Vivas to those who have fail'd! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!   
> And to those themselves who sank in the sea!   
> And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!   
> And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known"  
> Walt Whitman "The Song of Myself"  
> \- - -   
> Set early S1, ie, post "Pastor," pre "Liberator." Tried to post this over on my lj first, but it won't load for me, so... you guys pretty much get it first.

The Terrans call Atlantis The Lost City.

Their anthropologists have several ideas as to why – because the Gate address as lost, because they thought she had been destroyed, her rubble long lost to some alien sea; because it sounds better than The Last City in the tales of their ancient storytellers, amongst others – but Iohannes doesn't think any of them are quite right.

The Terrans called Atlantis lost because that what his people had thought her: lost to an enemy they could never defeat, not knowing he'd stayed behind to defend the urbs-naves. Lost, because, unlike the others, she hadn't been destroyed. No, she'd been lost the way they'd lost Avalon to the plague and the home galaxy to the haeretici before that: lost out of their own cowardice and blind, ancient fears.

But he doesn't tell the Terrans any of this, especially their anthropologists and particularly their praefecta, Elizabeta. They only trust him because they still believe their Ancients were as saints and could do no wrong. To tell them that their idols – his people, Iohannes himself – were not angels but rather risen apes, just as they are? That hard-won trust would vanish overnight, and then where would they be when the Wraith finally came, as they ultimately always would?

Dead and lost, in the Terrans' sense of the word, that's what.


	10. Human Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's a shitty human being, but, then again, he's not human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There is probably no more terrible instance of enlightenment   
> than the one in which you discover your father is a man — with human flesh."
> 
> Frank Herbert _Dune_  
>  \- - -  
> about a day-and-a-half post-"What You Are," ie, between #2 and #3 of "Socii"

Rodney feels like he's ten-years-old again and caught in the middle of one of his parent's never-ending fights. The only difference is this time he has a proper lab to retreat to when things got tense enough, rather than what he'd been able to cobble together in his bedroom.

(Well, that and he doesn't have to poke his head out every few hours or so to make sure Jeannie's okay, 'cause his parents were liable to forget about their two-year-old daughter when the going got rough enough. But since he still has to poke his head out to check up on some of his so-called scientists, who appear to have the combined intelligence of a not-so-bright two-year-old, he doesn't count that one.)

But still, other than that things are basically the same. There's the same tension in the air, the same terseness about the way they greet each other when they're all climbing the stairs to the Observation Room's balcony to watch the first ever attempted beaming-out of a goa'uld from a host.

"The Tok'ra," Rodney finds himself explaining unnecessarily as they wait for Carson and Hermiod to finish setting up their equipment, if only so they're not all standing there in pained silence, "have this bizarre laser-guided needle method of extraction that they refuse to let us look at the insides of, but we think it's a fairly similar idea. Beaming the goa'uld out, that is. The needle's probably just there for psychological value or something. I dunno. Either way, it's probably some kind of scavenged Ancient tech, like most of what the goa'uld use. Should be no reason why an Asgard beam shouldn't work as well as an Ancient one."

This provokes no response from either Elizabeth or John.

It also annoys the hell out of Rodney. If he'd wanted to deal with this sort of thing, he'd have stayed at home and gone to Université Laval rather than deal with the shit MIT makes its minor students put up with. Well, actually, no, he wouldn't've, but he might've actually felt bad about going to a college three hundred miles away and hardly ever visiting.

He's about to say something to this effect when John, appearing to realize this, takes pity on him. Or, perhaps, on Elizabeth, who's worrying her thumbnail as she watches the final preparations. Either way, speaks up then, his voice somewhat hoarse when he offers, "I'm a shitty human-being."

Rodney blinks at this. It's not the most eloquent apology he's ever heard, but it seems to do the trick, or, at least, startles Elizabeth long enough that she momentarily forgets she's mad at John and, with a half-laugh, asks, "What?"

"Human-being," John repeats, determinedly ignoring their gazes, "I'm a shitty one. Trust me, though, when I say I make a worse Alteran."


	11. Mixing and Joining and Mingling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iohannes is good at dealing with bad dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I do rest, but it is not sleep and I do not dream. I simply remember, the memories tumbling over one another, mixing and joining and mingling till I do not know when or where or how or why, and by nightfall it is unbearable and I rise from my troubled bed to howl at the moon or pace the corridors …"
> 
> Garth Nix "Endings"  
> \- - -  
> Takes place anytime after part 5 of "Advena" and before "Heres." While they're at the Miller's anyway.

"How do you do it?" Rodney asks him one night, when they're laying on the bed in Jeannie's guest room, just holding each other, because neither of them can sleep for the dreams that continue to haunt them all this time later.

"Do what?" he asks, voice rough. He rarely, if ever, slept more than five hours at a time on Lantea; it shouldn't make a difference that Terra's days are fourteen percent shorter. But he knows that, when they finally give up all pretence and go downstairs, Jeannie's going to ask about the deep bags under their eyes, the ones that keep getting deeper every night, despite the fact there's no emergencies here to disturb their rest.

"This."

"Try to sleep?"

"No," Rodney tries to snap, though it comes out more tired and small than Iohannes thinks he intended, "I mean, wake up from a nightmare to find me having one of my own and manage to somehow keep the both of us from falling completely to pieces. It shouldn't be humanly possible."

"Well," he drawls, "I'm not human, remember?"

"We share ninety-seven percent of a genome; I'd say that's close enough when it comes to dealing with someone else's bad dreams."

Iohannes contemplates this for a long minute. Ninety-seven percent of a genome is a lot – enough, perhaps, for Father to father other children here with some Terran woman long-ago – but, he thinks, maybe not enough to explain this. "I've had a lot to lose sleep over in my life," he says at last, choosing to keep the details to a minimum, "I guess knowing how to deal with it is something that spills over to other people's nightmares."

Rodney's quiet for a long time. Then, "I don't suppose it gets easier."

He doesn't know what dream pulled his amator from sleep this time – if it was the memory of Gaul's death, or Grodin's, or the Siege, or something else entirely – but Iohannes knows it never gets easier and that his own dreams are haunted by things that happened long before he went into stasis.

He also knows this is exactly what Rodney doesn't need to hear. "Give it time," he says instead, pressing a quick kiss to his bare shoulder, and tries to make his words sound as honest as possible.


	12. Nothing You Must Become

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's raining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There is really nothing you must be and there is nothing you must do.  
> There is really nothing you must have and there is nothing you must know.  
> There is really nothing you must become.  
> However, it helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet."
> 
> Zen Proverb  
> \- - -  
> We seem to be moving backwards with the drabbles, as this takes place between "Pastor" and "Custodia," ie, in the first week of the Expedition.

"I've never seen the rain before," John says as she approaches the doorway he's leaning against. It's a soft, gentle rain – something she'd associate with late Spring back on Earth if she hadn't been reliably informed that it's just after midwinter on Lantea, the planet they've found Atlantis on – and really nothing special. There's a certain novelty to it, what with the too blue sky of an alien world serving as the backdrop and a far-flung star poking bright beams of light through the dove grey clouds, but it's still only rain.

"Really?" Elizabeth asks, honestly surprised. "I would've thought..."

"Atlantis was submerged before my parents were even born. What little of my life I've not spent here has been in space. And, when I was able to visit other planets, we always made sure weather would be fair wherever we were visiting before passing through the porta..."

In the five days the Expedition has been on Atlantis, she thinks this is the most she's ever heard their resident Ancient say at one time, and it almost startles Elizabeth into silence, and she's not one to be easily detoured by foreign – or alien – leaders. The number of warlords and dictators she's mediated between verges on the absurd. And yet...

And yet John isn't just another warlord or dictator. He's an Ancient. A real, live Ancient, who'd been born about the same time humans had just begun to get a hand of farming and domestication of the more basic animals, when pottery had yet to be invented in the Levant and Jericho was still a small proto-city. He claims to have been little more than a common solider, abet one who can commune with Atlantis on some strange level, but still, he's an Ancient. And so, while the words come, they take longer than they otherwise might.

"And how do you like it?"

"I think it's brilliant," John says, turning slightly to flash her the widest smile she's ever seen. "I mean, it's nothing like flying, but it's kinda like, nature's done this all on it's own, y'know? Pulled the water up from the oceans, gathered them in clouds, and blown them here so it can come back down and start the process all over again. And it just happens, y'know, on every planet with the right kinda atmosphere. My people could change planets, give them the atmospheres necessary, but we never could build anything that could control the weather. Well, not well, anyway. It can almost make you see why our ancestors thought there were gods in nature."

Elizabeth looks out at the storm, pondering his words. "I can honestly say I've never thought about the rain that way."

"You think I'm being ridiculous." His words aren't accusing – they aren't said in anything short of the most charming, amused tone possible – but something in John seems to close down at this, as if he's regretting having shared anything at all and is trying to do undo whatever damage he believes this conversation has done.

"No, no," she says hastily. "Not at all. I just meant, when something's so common, like rain on Earth, that you tend to forget how miraculous it can be sometimes."

John beams at her.

"Well, as nice it would be to watch the rain all day, I actually came to see if you'd finished clearing out the rest of the rooms in tower twelve. I've got some impatient people looking forward to a hot shower and soft bed."

"I sent Ford your way with the room assignments about ten minutes ago."

"I guess I must have missed him."

"Yeah," John says distractedly, eyes flitting towards the ceiling. After a moment, he removes his black-on-grey uniform jacket and tosses it onto the nearest chair, and starts to walk out onto the rain-soaked balcony beyond.

"Wait," she says, grabbing his arm before he can pass through the doorway. "You'll get soaked, Major."

He raises his eyebrow at her curiously, telling her, "I know. 'Lantis said the same thing," and seeming genuinely puzzled as to the point of her comment.

"Then why are you going out there?" Without a jacket, no less, in the dead of Lantea's winter.

"'Cause," John says, smiling more brightly still as he shrugs of her grasp and steps backwards into the storm, "it's rain."


	13. Means Anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nothing's in control. Nothing makes sense.   
> There's just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything."
> 
> Angel "Sanctuary"  
> \- - -   
> Between parts 4&5 of "Socii" - blame my possible!concussion.

John's walking tour is cut short by an emergency with the desalination tanks (read, idiots who can't follow simple instructions and will be shipped back to Earth just as soon as Rodney has the time to do the paperwork), so he never actually gets to tell them about his progress on the equations they've found for recharging the ZedPMs. Or eat lunch that day.

The next day holds a minor crisis with Cadman's gate team, wherein John has to assist Major Lorne's team in annulling a marriage the Lieutenant had somehow found herself a part of upon telling the village elder on M19-753 she was from Atlantis. Rodney's not sure why they only ask for the Colonel and not their whole team, only that said annulmenthad involved rather more C4 than most. Still, whatever the reason, it means his presentation has to be put off for another day.

And then it's Christmas.

More specifically, do to the peculiar nature of gate travel, the next day is mostly Christmas. As Lantea has a twenty-eight hour rotation about it's sun, Igerna, and Earth, obviously, has a twenty-four hour clock, things can get pretty problematic when trying to adapt Earth dates to Lantean days. For the most part, they just sort of deal, and most of the Expedition has sort of gotten used to having to check their watches before writing the date down on anything, when they bother to at all.

In any case, it means that, for the first thirteen hours and seventeen minutes of this particular Lantean day, it's still December twenty-fourth on Earth. At 1318 hours, however, it will be midnight in Kamchatka Krai, making it officially the twenty-fifth back on Earth and, therefore, Christmas on Atlantis.

And Elizabeth, being Elizabeth, isn't allowing the mess to serve Christmas dinner a minute before then. At least, not something they can call Christmas dinner.

The upshot of this is that they – the senior staff, blue Colonel Caldwell, Major Lorne, and Radek – all have to listen to Lieutenant Cadman share yesterday's tale of woe while they wait for the clock to tick over so they can eat lunch.

"I still don't get it," she says at the end of it, "It's not even like I have the Ancient gene."

Carson looks at her adoring and shakes his head a little. "I think being from Atlantis was just an excuse, love."

Rodney tries not to vomit a little at this. Everything about Carson and Cadman's relationship creeps him out on a fundamental level, particularly when the doctor (who he's sort of ashamed to call his best friend after moments like this) gets that whole I worship the ground you walk on look in his eyes when he looks at Laura. Or talks about her. Or thinks more than passingly on her.

Oh, Rodney wants Carson to be happy and all that, in the oblique sort of sense where he thinks his friend might be less a mother hen about things certain things, like caffeine intake or sleeping habits, if only he were having fairly regular sex. But Rodney doesn't want to have to be confronted too regularly with the object of said sexual activities, particularly when he'd once had the unpleasant experience of sharing his body with said object.

Woman.

Marine.

Whatever. (Rodney's still not sure she's not actually the devil incarnate, come to even out his karmic scale by making him just as miserable as John makes him happy. 'Cause that would just be so typical of his life to this point.)

John, however, likes Lieutenant Cadman for some reason. They've managed to bond or something over their mutual love of plastic explosives and semi-automatic weaponry. And, as if this isn't bad enough given the Colonel's rather suicidal leadership style, she's also introduced him to Johnny Cash, which he actually seems to prefer to the music Rodney's tried to introduce him to – even the stuff by Holst and Fauré, some of which sort of sound like 'Lantis does when she's in one of her more stable moods.

Anyway, John's inexplicable friendship with Carson's girlfriend aside, he knows Rodney's feelings about that particular relationship very well (it's one of his favourite ranting topics, falling somewhere between my lab is staffed with idiots and I swear the mess is intentionally trying to poison me). He also has the gall to smirk at him when he sees Rodney's reaction.

This time, Rodney has to restrain the urge to stick his tongue out at him.

Seeming to realize this, John appears to take pity on him and chooses this moment to declare, quite definitively, "Descendants are weird."

Everyone at the table turns to gape at him. Well, not Caldwell (he's too nose to the grindstone to do something as plebeian as gawk at someone for something they've said). Or Ronan (because he honestly could care less). Or Teyla (because she's rather above such things as well). But everyone else's does, which thankfully cuts short both the discussion of the events on 753 and the disgustingly saccharine look on Carson's face.

"Well, you are."

"And what, pray tell," Elizabeth asks, eyes crinkling with amusement, quite possibly seeing through John's game already, "is normal?"

"I dunno. But it's not," he says, pointing towards the Christmas tree the biology department has set up in a corner of the mess, which looks more like a thin-needled palm tree than holiday card worthy, "covering potted plants in glass balls and lights. Or," with a nod towards Cadman, "wanting to marry someone because they're working off the misguided notion they're one of their Gods."

Teyla, thankfully, picks up the thread before those not familiar with John's my people were not Gods, thank you very much rantcould say anything that could start him down it. "I understand a tree adorned liked this one is an integral part of Earth's winter holidays. On Athos, as part of our winter solstice celebration, we would array our homes with garlands of the sweet-smelling arakae plant to drive out the darkness. What would your people do?"

"Nothing."

"Surely your people must have done something for your holidays."

"We didn't have holidays."

"Celebrations, then," Elizabeth asks, leaning forward, eager to learn more about Ancient culture. Her crows-feet deepen as she smiles encouragingly across the table, looking happier than Rodney's seen her in what seems like lifetimes. It's sort of brilliant because, well, he'd been starting to get worried about her and really, really didn't want to have deal with the fallout that would inevitably arise from referring the head of the Expedition to the Heightmeyer's office, particularly if it had led to her replacement. It's also sort of troubling because, well, it's a complete about face of where she'd been three days ago and he really doesn't want to have to deal with another alien possession this week either. Rodney chooses to take her current mirth as Christmas spirit tinged with anthropological enthusiasm and vows to double check that the goa'uld is still quite dead inside it's stasis chamber the next chance he gets.

Call him paranoid, but, in their line of work, a little bit of paranoia can be a healthy, galaxy-saving thing.

"Like what?"

"Oh, I dunno... Take birthdays. On Earth, a lot of times parents will throw a party for their child, and there will be cake and games and presents."

The Colonel appears to think about it. After a moment, "Nicolaa's parents always suggested she spend the whole day in meditation when her birthday rolled around."

"And your parents?"

Shrugging, "Father wasn't really big on meditation."

"And your mother?" Rodney's eyes snap to Radek, who'd had the gall to ask this particular question, and offers him a look that promises months of desalination tank maintenance if he didn't drop the subject now. "It is just," the Czech continues, apparently inured to Rodney's best glares already, "you are always talking about your father, but I have never heard you mention your mother once in all the time we have been here."

"There isn't much to tell," John says in that too calm, too casual way he adopts when things start hitting too close to home. "She died when I was three years old, so I don't actually remember much about her."

"Kurva," Radek says, going pale. "My apologies, I was not aware..."

"Don't worry about it. It's not like you could've known." He shrugs. "Besides, it's been ten thousand years. They're all dead but me anyway."

No one seems to know what to say after that, not even Rodney, who'd known the vague outline of the unintended tragedy that had been John's life before. The most he can do is slip his hand under the table and rest it on his lover's knee and hope it's some small comfort.

When John's joins his a minute later, though, the words start to come:

"What was her name?"

"Mother?"

"Who else would I be talking about?" he snorts.

"Alianora Cado Trebal Legata," John says, raising both eyebrows in reply. "Anyone else you want to know about? Grandparents? Great-Grandparents? Fifth cousins seven times removed?"

"Yes," Rodney says dryly, "tell me everything there is to know about your fifth cousins."

"Didn't have any."

"Of course not."

"Had a first cousin once removed, though. Danielia. She taught me how to fly."

"That was mighty nice of her," Carson says, obviously trying to steer the conversation back towards something, well, less likely to contribute to the mental health issues Atlantis likes to accuse John of having.

John lets out a bark of laughter at this. "Nice? No. Genocidal might be a better word to describe her. Brilliant pilot though..." His eyes flick towards the ceiling, than down to his watch. "It's 1318 hours, by the way."


	14. Conspired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janus wasn't really a bad person. He just wasn't a good one either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place, and I can't despise my whole life."
> 
> Tony Kushner's Angels In America  
> \- - -  
> this drabble can takes place, chronologically, anywhere after "Liberator" in the Ancient!John 'verse, though in my head it falls somewhere in the whole "Dei et Viri'/"Socii"/unnamed sequel arc

Iohannes loves his father.

It's somewhat ridiculous for him to even think for a number of reasons, the first of which is that Father has more likely than not been dead for the better part of ten millennia and rest of which are that the man who fathered him is not, was not, and never will be worthy of the love and attention Iohannes gave him.

But Iohannes loves his father. In the active, present tense.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Father was never exactly around while he was growing up, and so this – this future; this After he's woken to, ten thousand years and more after he went into the cathedra, which is both so similar and so different to what came Before that he's still not certain what to make of it – seems like nothing more than another of his long absences. He's been out of stasis for eighteen months now, which is surely long enough for it to sink it that he is the last Alteran in existence, that Father will never walk out of his lab one day and, not realizing all the days and weeks that have passed, and start rambling about his latest invention and how it will surely help them to defeat the Wraith this time.

Such a thing would be just like Father too and, would not the years involved prohibit such a thing, Iohannes could almost bring himself to believe it: That Father's not dead – that he isn't buried in some forgotten tomb on Terra, so long dead that the cities made out of his bones are dust themselves now, - just working. And, when he emerges, he'll have some device that will allow them to destroy the monsters their people had so unwittingly released onto this galaxy without destroying the lives they'd seeded throughout it, and then...

And then...

He is a fool, he knows, to wish for such things. Father is dead and never coming back – not with help, not with anything. And, even if he were to, it would never be in the way Iohannes wants. No, he'd be all the hard lines and sharp words that have been blunted by ten thousand years of dreaming, more interested in what he can build and create than anything that lives and breathes, and, in those rare moments when he chooses to pay attention to his fellow man, it would only be for as long as it takes to seduce and sleep with a new conquest.

But Iohannes loves him.

He knows the Terrans do not understand. Rodney in particular, for all he salivates over Father's research, gets moderately enraged whenever he goes into too much detail on Father's parenting techniques. Granted, Iohannes would be the first to admit that Father was a truly terrible father, but that does not mean that he wasn't a good person.

As Father was fond of saying, The hardest thing in life is doing what is right rather than what you wish to be right. If sacrificing his son's happiness was the best way to see the Wraith defeated, well, who is Iohannes to complain?

(He's more than aware there's a logical fallacy in there somewhere. He is what Father made him, which means he's incapable of hating Father the way he probably deserves to be hated. Iohannes knows that he can be vindictive and emotionally distant, bitter and judgemental, vengeful and – as Rodney would put it – self-sacrificing to a fault, and that these things are probably to be frowned upon, but he is what he is, and, irregardless, these so-called faults have kept him alive while the rest of his race faltered.)

The thing about Father, however, is how much of him Iohannes sees in Rodney. He'd be a liar to say they don't share the same mania, the same genius... And he'd be a greater liar still to say that he's not aware that he's managed them both the same way, bringing them both food when they need it, dragging them to bed when they've forgotten it; serving as their conscience when they've been swept up by the heady possibilities of their ideas. He's even started to bring Rodney offerings of mathematical proofs like he used to with Father – not that he'd have been overly impressed by a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis in base ten maths, or even a general theory of Diophantine equations in the same, – though that had been a fairly unconscious thing on his part.

But still. Iohannes loves his father. He loves Rodney too, for what he'll admit are, on some level, many of the same reasons. He just wishes to he knew a way to be certain that he loves Rodney for, well, Rodney, not not for what he sees of Father in him.

It's absurd, Iohannes knows. For all their outward similarities, Rodney and Father are two very different people. Father is – was; past tense, never to be present again – forty percent ego, forty-five percent ability, and fifteen percent a deep and startling morality that had it's origins somewhere in the bloodstained planet of Asuras. And Rodney...

Rodney's half genius, half bravado, and one hundred percent human. Which is to say, stubborn and brave and emotive and irrational and excitable and everything that his people were not.

More than that, though, Iohannes thinks his amator can actually end the war. Not just Rodney, but Carson and Elizabeta and all the Terrans who've come to live on Atlantis. They're strong in a way that his people, a moribund race even before they'd come to this galaxy, never were.

Iohannes thinks of telling Rodney this sometimes.

He never does.


	15. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Lorne and Zelenka interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Are these the shadows of things that Will be or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” 
> 
> Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol  
> \- - -   
> Immediately after "Heres"

“I am Radek Zelenka,” the man in question says as soon as the official introductions are over, “and I am to be your best friend in the Pegasus galaxy.”   
“Is that so?” Evan asks, vaguely amused by this comment. At the moment, Zelenka looks more like a wiry and somewhat manic version of Albert Einstein than, well, the type of people Evan usually hangs out with. Which are usually not science types with more letters after their name than experience. (But he might be projecting here, a good deal of his time at the SGC having been spent serving as light switch for some of Zelenka's extraordinarily dull, extraordinarily unpleasant Milky Way counterparts.)   
“Yes,” Zelenka says firmly, grabbing his elbow and leading him down a hallway. “With Rodney and the Colonel being the way they are, it really works best for everyone if we are friends.”   
“I see.”  
“Good. Now, tell me,” he continues, pulling him into one of the city's closet-like transporters, “what are your feelings on slivovitz?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slivovitz - a plum brandy that's the Czech version of moonshine


	16. Death or Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nec mortem effugere quisquam nec amorem potest.
> 
> "No one is able to flee from death or love."
> 
> Publilius Syrus  
> \- - -  
> Anytime in the 'verse, but, ideally, after "Dei et Viri"

Rodney is, quite possibly, telling the truth when he claims Iohannes has a thing for 'Lantis.

He loves her hallways – their strong walls, their solid floors; their stained-glass windows – and the way they split and join and weave intricate, indirect paths throughout the city. He loves her major thoroughfares, the ones that run in parallel with her primary conduits and processing centres, for the life that thrums in them. He loves her smallest passageways for their secrets, forgotten to everyone but his carissima, who knows all secrets, and shared only with him, her pastor ultimus. And he loves all her corridors in all the sizes between, for reasons as many and varied as they themselves are.

He loves her towers, which scrape the sky with their dizzing heights, and her piers, which press them both to the skin of this planet.

He loves the sections his people abandoned long ago, so quiet and undisturbed that the only sound he can hear beneath the shifting of dust is her brilliant, ever-changing song.

He loves the areas the Terrans have rendered habitable again, so filled with voices and laughter and footfalls that reminds him of an age beyond memory, when 'Lantis was last well and truly alive.

He loves the howl of the wind as it weaves between her walls, and the patter of rain as it falls upon them, and the roar of the waves as they crash against her docks – new sounds, new loves, but loves nonetheless.

Most of all, though, he loves standing in the Gate Room – her heart, if any one room within her walls could be said to be so vital to her – and basking in the wonder and the glory and the heartache and the heart-breaking beauty that is Atlantis, the only city that's over mattered.

(His first clear memory is of doing just that, half-hidden behind one of the pillars on the lower tier, waiting for Father to finish speaking with the Council. 'Lantis had seemed to sing just for him that day, making up an operetta that appeared to follow the movement of a school of fish just outside the Gate Room window, and it had all he'd been able to do not to laugh and give his position away to the adults that had filled the room.)

Which, granted, is a lot of love for a guy like him to be throwing around. But that doesn't change the fact that no language he's encountered, not even Alteran, has a better word for what he and 'Lantis share. From that morning in the Gate Room on, she'd done more to raise him than any other adult in his life had. As he'd grown older, their relationship had changed, but the underlying emotion had remained the same.


	17. Something of a Delusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I wonder what fuels the fires that burn images of glorious battle into the hearts of so many […]. Surely the tangible remnants, the rubble, and the bones, are hardly worth the moment of battle, but is there, I wonder, something less tangible here, something of a greater place? Or is there, perhaps – and this is my fear - something of a delusion to it all that drives us to war, again and again?"
> 
> RA Salvatore's The Two Swords  
> \- - -   
> After "Socii"

"It's called chess," Iohannes tells Ronan, who's watching a game two of Rodney's science minions are playing on the other side of the aisle. He knows what it's like to be confused by the things the Terrans do, and has tried to do his best to help Ronan adapt as best he could. It's a difficult thing, though, what with the other man having been on his own for so long and Iohannes, admittedly, having trouble adapting himself sometimes, but it's better than it could be. At the very least, it's better than nothing, and that's probably the important thing in these situations. "It's a game."

"They've been sitting there like that since I sat down," he says, words almost accusing. And maybe they're supposed to be – Ronan, from what little he knows of him (which is less than one might think, given the time he's been on Atlantis), is a man of actions, with little use for the science and research that has been the staple of the Expedition's time for most of the last few months. Yes, there have been Bantos lessons and target practices and long morning runs, but that doesn't change the fact they've not really done anything to fight the Wraith since Ronan's been here. Nothing that involved the death of actual Wraith, at least. "Neither of them's even blinked yet."

"Well, it's not really a game with a lot of action."

"I can see that," Ronan says wryly, turning most of his attention back to the tray in front of him.

Iohannes stares into his tea cup. After an experimental sip, he decides its still too weak and leaves it to brew while he tries to explain. "It's about strategy. He's planning his next move, and the move after that, and the one after that."

"They do a lot of that around here, don't they?"

"Eh, don't let them fool you. They can be surprisingly resourceful when the situation calls for it."

"All I've seen so far is a lot of paperwork and a lot of yelling when things don't go their way."

He shrugs. Iohannes has lived through war. He's starting to know peace, or, at least, a rough approximation of it. He knows which he prefers, even if there are times when he feels a Wraith armada would be preferable to spending another day doing paperwork. "Like I said, the situation has to call for it."

"You're nothing at all like I imagined an Ancestor to be."

"Thanks," he says honestly, and whatever he is going to say next is cut off by his radio going off, so he just nods to Ronan and leaves him, at least, to finish his lunch before the next crisis strikes.


	18. Well Suited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.”
> 
> Jean Rostand, Marriage  
> \- - -  
> After part 5 of "Legati"

"Filius haeretici," Iohannes barks into his comm as they drop out of hyperspace, the Aurora tumbling into Lantean orbit with all the grace of an eighty tonne brick. Were it not for the fact that the linter is sentient – and the fact that, even without proper controls, he's no slouch as a pilot, – Iohannes has no doubts that they'd currently be in a entirely irrecoverable angle of decent. As it is, they're going to have to go through some significant aerobreaking manoeuvres before they can even think of making port. "What kind of approach do you call that Thor?"

"My apologizes, Pastor," the Asgard says calmly as he brings his own linter into a higher – and far more stable – orbit around the planet. "I did not anticipate-"

He never does find out whatever it is that Thor hadn't expected, as the next thing he knows Aurora is practically screaming, nay, shrieking, with unrestrained joy as they enter Atlantis' comm range. It's hard to make out exactly what she's saying because of the volume, but it sounds a lot like home and finally and maybe even mother.

Iohannes is vaguely horrified. He didn't know anything an intellegentia artificialis could do could horrify him any more.

"Rory!" he says as sternly as possible, the tone he's using sounding strange even to his own ears until Iohannes realizes their bleeding, that's how riotous she's being, "Calm down. I know you want to go home, but we've got to make sure your shields and whatnot will hold before we land. I dunno about you, but I certainly didn't go to all this trouble for you to break apart in re-entry."

The linter tries to restrain herself, she really does – her noise level goes down from about a thousand in his head to a merely uncomfortable eleven, and she stops quivering like she's about to fall apart at the seams – but, for all her age, she's so very young and it's rather like trying to tell one of the Terran anthropologists that, no, he'd prefer not to talk about his people, the war, or, really, anything more resent than last week's senior staff meeting.

Iohannes calls it compartmentalizing when he's forced to name it.

The anthropologists call it deliberately unhelpful, which is true as well.

The physiologists call it post-traumatic stress disorder, which isn't, by any measure of the term, but try telling them that.

Anyway, Aurora tries, but still, she can barely managed half-a-minute of silence before asking, /When can we land?/ in a way that's more curious than repentant.

"When Rodney says we can."

/Oh./ There's a beat, then, /When will that be?/

"I dunno. Rodney?" he looks over at where his amator is fiddling with a tablet, frowning unhappily and giving no sign he's heard Iohannes at all. "Rodney," he tries again, to no avail, before waling over and shouting his name as loud as he dares right in his ear.

"YES, YES, WHAT?" Rodney shouts back, jumping a full foot into when he turns and finds Iohannes so close. Iohannes barely has time to smirk at this, however, before Rodney's right in his personal space – closer than they usually ever dare when either of them is, however ostensibly, working, raising a hand to his ear. "JOHN, YOUR EARS-"

"I know-" he begins, but Rodney either can't hear or chooses to ignore him, as he plucks the earwigs from both their ears and starts to examine them as if they they were the source of all their problems.

Iohannes is forced to stare pointedly at the ceiling until Aurora has managed to get a hold of herself – and, thus, the volume of her song – for him to be heard. "I know," he repeats when this is the case, using Rodney's surprise to steal back his earwig. "Might want to put a rush-order on the repairs, buddy. Rory's getting anxious."

"You can't rush genius."

"I'm not asking for genius. I'm asking for basic hold-together-ness."

"Hold-together-ness," Rodney repeats, voice dripping with disbelief. "Please, tell me that's some sort of complicated Ancient word that just doesn't translate well into English because, I swear to God, I absolutely refuse to believe that the Ancient school system ever degenerated to a point where such a word might be considered appropriate by anyone, to include you."

"Rodney."

"Oh, no. Don't Rodney me. If you won't let me call the ZedPM recharger a ZedPM recharger because it's a debasement of the Alteran language, you can't use hold-together-ness as a word for the same reason."

"Can we lay off the grammar for the moment and concentrate on getting Aurora patched up enough to land? I'm doing my best here," Iohannes frowns at the nearest console, "but I can only hold her off for so long."

"Please. You forget I've seen you with Atlantis. I sincerely doubt this ship would – or could – do anything you didn't expressly want her do to."

He raises an eyebrow. "You really want to test that theory?"

"Hey," Rodney says, indicating the tablet he's already gone back to fiddling with, "I'd like not to disintegrate in the atmosphere as the next person, but I'm just saying that there's no actual risk here, so it's kinda pointless trying to talk it up to me so I've no choice but to overcome it."

Iohannes considers reminding him of all the noise he'd made over them being aboard the same highly-damaged, ten thousand year-old Alteran linter while it travelled through hyperspace with its largely unknown intellegentia artificialis, but decides against it. Implying where Rory could overhear that she mightn't be entirely trustworthy could do no one any good. Least of all them or their eardrums.

He settles for, "Whatever," instead.

"Give me five minutes," the Terran sighs. "I'll be able to tell you something by then."

"Five minutes? You're slipping, buddy."

"Not going to work," he practically sing-songs as Iohannes replaces his earwig (a task made more difficult as he finds himself shaking his head, trying not to laugh).

"Says you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seemed like a brilliant way to start the next chappie... until it didn't. So I'm going to drabble it and try a different angle.  
> Filius haeretici is son of a heretic in Latin.


	19. Inheritor Of Our Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."
> 
> Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country  
> \- - -  
> After "Legati." This is the result of 20 pages of _The Good Soilders_

He's not hiding. He's not told anyone he doesn't want to be found, or be left alone, or that he needs time to himself to think. But Iohannes is in his office – the one that used to be Gulcherius Col Praetor's but is his now, through accident and death (so much death) and things not even an Alteran who once Ascended and can remember bits and pieces of the entire universe in those three minutes can understand – and, for the most part, it's the came as hiding, he so rarely uses it.

So it's a surprise when one of the anthropologists, Doctor Helena Lazos, finds him.

"I don't feel like talking about it," he tells her without preamble. "So don't ask."

"I'm not here about the Aurora," Doctor Lazos says, seeming less self-possessed than usual. "It's a more... personal matter."

Her unusual temerity is enough to pull his gaze away from his laptop, where he's been trying (with limited success) to make his way through all the paperwork Terran bureaucracy seems to require. "I'm not talking about my family either."

Lazos gives a small laugh at this, taking an uninvited seat as she examines his office with a sharp, practised eye, as if the décor might tell her something yet unknown about his people and their disposition. "Nothing like that, Colonel. It's more of a favour, really."

"Favour?" he asks, even more sceptically. The number of things he'll willing do for the anthropologists is quite small and most of them are grammatical in nature, boiling down to the correct pronunciation of his name and a few of the more common Alteran words. It's pedantic of him, Iohannes knows, but he's nothing if not the product of his upbringing, and he couldn't avoid all of his people's faults.

"I want a transfer back to Earth."

Iohannes can feel his eyebrows rocket towards his hairline. "Really?" It's about as far down the list of things he'd not expect an anthropologist to say, ever as can be before traipsing into outright impossibilities.

"Yes."

"I thought you liked Atlantis."

"Oh," she says quickly, leaning forward in the chair she's taken and reaching out a hand as if to pat his own in reassurance. He carefully  
manoeuvres out of her reach before she can do so. "I do. I really, do, but..." She trails off, bringing her hand back into her lap so she can wring it with the other.

Iohannes doesn't have to be good at reading people to see that she's nervous about something. And this is a woman who, like all anthropologists he's ever known, doesn't get nervous.

Or anxious.

Or even vaguely discomforted when being reminded that it isn't his job to sit around and answer their questions.

It's more than a little troublesome.

"Well," he says after a couple minutes of quiet hand-wringing, "if that's what you want." He isn't going to force anyone to stay in the city if they didn't want to, especially if she's an anthropologist.

"It is."

"I'll send it through next dial-in."

"Thanks," Lazos says, and moves to stand.

But, for all he's not going to force her to stay, "Why didn't you go to Doctor Corrigan," the head of her department, or Elizabeta about it?"

"I-" she begins, then stops. Then, forcing herself to look him in the eye, says, "I'm pregnant," in such a tone that it's clear she's expecting some sort of argument.

Iohannes takes it back. This is now the last thing he'd ever expected an anthropologist to say to him. Or anyone, really, ever.

Doctor Lazos takes his silence as an invitation to continue. "It's just... I'm not like your mother. I'm not a solider. I'm not even that good of a person. I know women in Pegasus have children all the time, and that they all face the Wraith threat, and many of them actively fight them, but...

"But," she says, swallowing, "for all that I've come to love this city, and for all that I enjoy working here, I can't raise a family here."

"There's no place for children in a war." It is the answer he was always given when he was small and asked why there were so few people his own age in the city. There'd been Nicolaa, of course, who'd been six years younger, and Josua, who'd been five years older, but that'd had been it, and no children had been born in Atlantis since.

'Lantis misses children.

"Exactly," Lazos says fervently, "which is why I came to you, not any of the others. They'd try to convince me to stay."

"But not me?"

"I thought you might understand. And," she adds with a small laugh, "that you might be glad to be short an anthropologist for a while."

"There is that," he grins.

"So you'll do it?"

"Of course."

"Thank you, Colonel." And, with that, she leaves, with all the same unexpectedness as she'd entered.

It takes him a long time to get back to his paperwork after this.


	20. To Conquer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Prometheus, in order to be free, has but a bronze collar to break and a god to conquer; Hamlet must break and conquer himself."  
> Victor Hugo  
> \- - -  
> I was rewatching "The Fourth Horseman" today. This is the result. Grauitous quotes are taken from therein - and no actual SGA cast appears.

"I'm just saying, it's pure ego."

"Pure ego? I don't know, at that level of enlightenment? I mean, arrogance is about pleasure, right? Wallowing in the pride of one's achievement."

"Well," Cam says, pointing at Daniel with his water bottle, "you don't think that getting a whole galaxy to bow down and worship you is something to write home about?"

Daniel frowns. "No, I'm just saying the Ascended beings I've met have pretty much all the satisfaction anyone can need. They don't need to lord it over us. They kind of look at us the way we look at bugs: insignificant, amusing at best. And," he continues, "even the one normal, non-Ascended Ancient we've met seems to think of us, again, as hopelessly primitive, if more interesting than most the other Descendants he's encountered."

"I still can't believe you got to meet a real, live Ancient. And I missed it."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing: he's not quite what you'd expect from an Ancient."

"So no cryptic remarks about Ascension or the desperate desire for us to worship him as a god?"

"Definitely not. And, actually, he dislikes the Ori more than we do. Apparently the Ancients we're familiar with thought that letting yourself be worshipped as a god was the worst crime that could be committed."

"Can't say I blame them if this Origin business is the result."

"We're not quite sure what it was like before the Ancients and the Ori split, only that, apparently, the two groups fought for over a thousand years before the Ancients came to our galaxy."

Cam whistles. A thousand years is a long time. "He say anything about how they beat them?"

"No." Daniel, clearly surprised by this question, stops in the middle of the hallway and turns to look back at him, frowning slightly. "The Ancients actually lost the war. Those that came to the Milky Way were actually trying to escape the pre-Ascended Ori – or the Haeretici, as the Ancients called them."

"That's not good."

"No, it's not."


	21. Sole Survivors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen."  
> John le Carre "The Chancellor Who Agreed To Play Spy"   
> \- - -  
> after part 5 of "Legati"

"What did you mean?" Rodney asks, half buried under a console as he physically creates workarounds around damaged crystals. "Earlier," he clarifies. "When you were talking to Aurora before I beamed over. The side of the conversation I heard mentioned something about pods."

Iohannes is, by this point, sitting not too far away. They've gotten the life support system back online, so he's been able to remove his pressure suit. Well, the helmet and gloves at least; he's still got the suit itself on, unzipped and pushed down to his hips, and the mag-boots. The mag-boots aren't really necessary either – the artificial gravity had been restored with the inertial dampeners – but he'd not thought to bring his combat boots with him when he'd beamed over and getting Thor to do so now doesn't seem worth the bother, not when they're within half-hour or so of bringing Aurora in to land.

What all this adds up to is that the crinkling of the suit's Nomex fabric rather covers up the sound of Iohannes' head banging against the wall as he asks, "Would it be too much for you to hope I meant escape pods?"

"Do you even need to ask?"

He sighs. "Aurora carried a crew of two hundred and thirty-eight. Sixty-three managed to get to the stasis pods before life support cut out." It must have happened fast, however the attack had gone down, for only twenty-six percent of the crew to make it to the pods. They must have been desperate too, as they would've gone to the jumpers first, if they could, or tried to repair the damage themselves. Even amongst his own people, stasis had held cowardly overtones that few were willing to countenance.

"For someone whose favourite hobby is waxing lyrical about how difficult it is to be the last Ancient in the universe, you don't sound all that excited."

"I've never waxed lyrical about anything," Iohannes protests.

"Obviously you've never heard your my people were not gods, or even particularly decent people speech."

"I prefer to think of it as more of a diatribe myself."

"Fine, whatever. Still, there are sixty-three of your people on this ship in stasis, which is sixty-three more Ancients than the universe had yesterday. That's got to be worth something."

"It's not that simple, Rodney."

"Why? Did the pods malfunction or something? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that the last diagnostic I ran showed a fair amount of power going to something that could be a whole bunch of suspended animation systems."

"Rory says the pods are functioning at seventeen percent, but that's not the point."

"It's not? 'Cause I would've thought you'd like having other Ancients around. At the very least, they'll be someone new for the anthropologists to bother about their arrowheads and pottery shards. And, if we're very lucky, some of them will know something about this ship, so we'll be able to start right in on repairs rather than waste half our time trying to figure out how everything works."

"They've been in stasis for over ten thousand years, Rodney. They're not going to be in any shape to show anyone anything."

"You were sneaking into a Wraith base within twenty-four hours of being defrosted. I think these folks should be able to handle a few engineering questions."

"I doubt that."

"What?" he asks, sliding out from underneath the console at long last. "Why not?"

"'Cause, Rodney, mostly dead corpses tend not to be able to do much of anything."

"What d'you mean mostly dead corpses?"

"I mean, Rodney," (Iohannes stresses this last so harshly that the word seems to shatter, with pieces of its shrapnel flying into every corner of the room), "that, even having been in the pods, they're going to have aged so much that you should planning their funerals, not what questions to ask them."

"What the hell are you talking about? You were "

Iohannes takes a deep breath. Then another. And then, after a third, he pulls himself to his feet, ignoring the way the crinkling of the Nomex seems to dominate the room. "Look, let's just get Aurora back home. We can talk about her crew when we're on the ground."


	22. Need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Did you know? that those who spend their time protecting others are the ones that really need someone to protect them?"  
> Anonymous  
> \- - -   
> this drabble takes place, chronologically, between parts 5&6 of "Advena".   
> IDK where the idea itself came from.

John isn't in bed when Rodney wakes up that first morning in Vancouver – not that this really worries him. John's not one for lingering in bed. Hell, John's not even one for sleeping, particularly not when they're on alien planets. Which Earth is to him.

It's not until Rodney drags himself out of bed and into the kitchen that he actually starts to worry. Jeannie's there, trying to get Madison to eat while what's-his-name cooks breakfast for the rest of them. (Eggs by the look of it, which is something, as he doesn't think he can deal with any more tofu. And this is only their second meal at his sister's house.) But of John there is no sign.

"Wow, Mer," Jeannie says, eyes going wide. "It's only seven o'clock. I don't think I've ever seen you up this early before."

"You've no idea what time zone I've come from."

"Colorado's only one hour ahead."

"Before that." In fact, if his math is right – and it always is – it is late afternoon back on Atlantis. Just thinking that makes him feel tired all over again, and he immediately starts searching cabinets for the mugs that have to go with the – blessedly full – coffee pot on the counter.

"It's the next one over," Jeannie informs him, gesturing with her own cup. "Any idea when John might be up? I was thinking it might be fun for all of us to go to the planetarium together. Madison loves the place, and I'm sure you'll have fun going through and correcting all the exhibits."

"It's not my fault that those places always get everything wrong. You'd think that they'd appreciate the consult. You've no idea what my consultation free is these days. Wait," he says, almost dropping the coffee cup as her words hit him. "You mean you've not seen John all morning?"

What's-his-name starts dishing out the eggs. "No. We thought he was still asleep."

Rodney sinks into the nearest chair, coffee forgotten. "God. This is going to end badly. I can tell already. It's been at least a week since he's done anything stupid, suicidal, or otherwise ill-advised. I should've known he'd take the first opportunity to do so."

Jeanne snorts. "That ridiculous car of yours is still out front. He's probably gone running or something. Isn't that what military types usually do?"

"That's no guarantee he hasn't gotten himself lost. Or caught up in some convenience store robbery. Or said hello to the wrong person and is lying a pool of his own blood somewhere."

"You worry too much. He's an Air Force Major. I'm sure he'll be fine"

"You don't know John like I do, Kyle."

"It's Kaleb."

"Whatever. Fact remains this is going to end badly. I can already tell."

Which is, of course, when John comes into the room, the grey Air Force shirt he'd managed to get his hands on while they were at the SGC almost black with sweat.

Precisely three point seven seconds after this, Jeannie starts the teasing.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They end up going to the planetarium, which isn't as bad as it could be.

In fact, he's so surprised by how well it goes – no one threatens to throw them out even once, which happened the last three times he went to any sort of science museum – that he feels it's adequate explanation for why he didn't pick up on the fact John had somehow managed to acquire a gun until the Ancient's un-tucking it from his waistband that evening as they're getting ready for bed.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I thought the SGC wouldn't give you a gun."

"They didn't," John says, setting the pistol on the night-stand.

"Then where'd it come from?"

"A shop of Fraser Street. It's a Colt M1911A1. Almost got an M9, like we've got back on Atlantis, but this has three times the stopping power. It will probably still take a couple shots to take down a Wraith, but not anywhere near as many. Might have to order some more for the rest of the Expedition if it works out."

Rodney blinks. Deciding it's best not even to touch the idea of what a Wraith might be doing in Vancouver of all places, he asks, "They just let you walk in off the street and buy one? 'Cause I'm pretty sure there are rules against that kind of thing."

John shrugs and pulls off his shirt.

"Okay then. Better question: why did you buy one?"

"Why do Terrans carry weapons when they go through the porta?"

"Earth's not a hostile planet, John."

"Says you."

Rodney frowns. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you're going to get into for doing something like this?"

"Eh, I've been in worse, I'm sure."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Later, after the pistol's been discovered by the MPs guarding the entrance to Area 51 and he's been privy to a dressing down the likes of which Rodney's never seen before, he can't help but wonder what John could've possibly done to result in worse.


	23. Descent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oh you who are born of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises, easy is the descent to Hell; the door of dark Dis stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps and come out to the air above, that is work, that is labor!" 
> 
> Virgil The Aeneid  
> \- - -  
> This takes place far in the future of the Ancient!John 'verse - specifically, during the episode "Daedalus Variations"

Ronon does not understand the language of the Ancestors, but he does know one thing: that the voice which comes over the Daedalus' speakers after they've destroyed the ship attacking Atlantis in this reality is Sheppard's.

"See," he says, "told you they already had one of you."

Sheppard, however, doesn't answer him, not even with a smirk. He just slams his hand into the button that controls the Daedalus' internal communications systems and barks, "Rodney, get us out of this reality now."

"Yeah, working on it," McKay snaps back. "Just give me a-"

"No, now."

"Why? What's going on up there?"

"There is," Sheppard says through gritted teeth, "another me here."

"So? There's probably an alternate version of all of us in each universe we visit."

"Yeah, well, none of them have just radioed up to tell us that they are the Lord Iohannes, our one and true god, or that we have five minutes to surrender our ship and pledgetrue and honest faith to them before they blast us from the sky. So, again, get us out of here. Now."

The Daedalus shimmers into yet another reality seconds later.

Sheppard hangs his head for a long moment, not even seeming to breathe, before activating the sensors and trying to figure out what sort of place they've jumped into now


	24. Such a Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension."
> 
> Frodor Dotoevski The Brothers Karamazov  
> \- - -   
> Between 7 & 8 of "Legati"

Lorne is standing in front of the captain's chair, hands resting non-threateningly on the heel of his P90, when Iohannes beams onto the bridge of the Muspelheim. He's got that sort of look on his face that says I'm trying my best to be patient, but I'm not above shooting things if you don't stop this bullshit right now, and so it's probably understandable that the Major's first words to him after he fully materializes are, "Thank God."

"Not God, Major, just modern medicine. Or what you lot call modern medicine. So what's the situation?"

Lorne doesn't even roll his eyes at either comment. He just sort of shakes his head and says, "Approximately three hours ago, an unknown ship appeared in orbit. It refused to identify itself, so we raised the shield. Shortly thereafter, the Muspelheim fired upon and destroyed the unknown ship."

"Okay then," Iohannes drawls as he joins him in front of Thor's chair. "So what's the problem?"

"The problem, sir, is that Thor immediately demanded to speak with you, and, when he couldn't, immediately recalled Heimdall and Sigyn from Atlantis. So Doctor Weir asked me up here to do what I could to avoid an intergalactic incident."

"And it seems to be going so well too."

Dryly, "We all can't have your brilliant negotiation skills, sir."

Iohannes just beams at him. "I knew there was a reason you were my third-favourite nephew."

Drier still, "Third, sir?"

"It's nothing against you, Lorne. I've just known the other two longer. 'Sides, it still puts you well into the top one percent, so..." He glances at Thor, who's blinking in that slow way Asgard have when they've got something noisome to discuss. "What's the deal, buddy?"

Thor gives another slow blink before asking, "Are you certain you wish to discuss this in front of the Earthling?"

"I'm only going to tell them everything anyway when I get back to Atlantis, so might as well."

"Are you certain?" the Asgard says with unusual consideration. "I only reiterate out of deference to your personal connection to the matter at hand, as well as your hegemony over this world."

"What personal connection? For that matter, what hegemony?"

"I speak of course regarding your status as protector of this world and the humans upon it, as in accordance with Subsection Twelve of-"

"Of the Alliance Treaty. Right. Huh." He ponders this for a moment. Sure, Matertera Catalina had seen to it that this and other things of historical irrelevance were drilled into his head before she Ascended, but he'd never actually had use for any of it before now. "I didn't think we were bothering with that any more, what with the Alliance just being you, me, and whatever other Asgard are left. But sure, if that's what you want to call it, why not? It's not like it means anything I'm not already doing.

"It's the personal connection part that I don't get, though. I'd never even seen an Asgard ship until yours appeared in orbit, let alone had any dealings with any. "

"Are you familiar with the fate of the Brísingamen?"

"Yeah," Iohannes shrugs, not getting the connection. "It was an Asgard transport vessel," he clarifies for Lorne, "that was stolen from Terran airspace back when Atlantis was still in Avalon by rogue members of their Science Council."

"Someone managed to steal an Asgard ship?" Lorne asks, clearly not buying the idea. It's kind of amusing in it's own way. It's also exactly what he'd been trying to point out to Elizabeta just minutes ago. It's impossible to be equals with those who think them infallible.

But still. "If it makes you feel any better, they were a group of rebel Asgard."

"Indeed. The Vanir, as they called themselves, was a rogue fraction of our Science Council who sought to solve our cloning problem by any means necessary."

A flicker of understanding comes into the Terran's eyes. "Like Loki?"

"Indeed. However, Loki's methods, while abhorrent, were far less iniquitous than the atrocities perpetrated by the Vanir against the humans of the Milky Way."

Iohannes doesn't bother asking about whatever crimes against humanity this particular Asgard might have inflicted upon the Avalonian descendants. He can easily imagine and, even if he couldn't, doesn't need any more fodder for his nightmares to guess their outcome. "I take it by your use of past tense your lot got control of them while I was asleep?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, it was my capture of the Vanir leader Fenrir in our last engagement against the Vanir that was largely responsible for my rise to my current rank following the death of Supreme Commander Wotan. However, it is possible that not all the Vanir were captured at that time, as several of their vessels were never fully accounted for."

"I'm also guessing you think that the ship that attacked Atlantis was the Brísingamen."

"Indeed."

"Well, here's a question: Why? I mean, even if it was the Brísingamen and there were Vanir on it, what would they want with Atlantis? Better yet, how would they even know she was here? All the urbes-naves were still in Avalon when she was stolen."

"As to how the Vanir found Atlantis, I cannot say, but it is likely that they retreated to Pegasus to hide from the Asgard fleet, not knowing that the Ancients had removed themselves here to escape the plague that was ravaging your civilization. But, as far as their purpose for coming here, I believe I've adequately determined their reasons."

"Really?" Iohannes asks, trying for polite and getting I don't have time for this bullshit instead. He's starting to get the feeling that Thor didn't really want to tell him, not for anything dark or sinister, but rather because he thinks Iohannes might be better off not knowing. It's the sort of thing 'Lantis does to him all the time, and he can't help but wonder what she might've been saying to the Supreme Commander behind his back. "How?"

"I beamed the crew off the Brísingamen before destroying it."

That would do it. "Go on."

"They spoke of a device built by the Ancients, which they had recently discovered and now for which they sought the key. A device which, when activated, would lead to the destruction of the Wraith once and for all."

"Yeah, we built a lot of those," Iohannes snorts. "You'll notice that none of them actually worked."

"This one, they claim, did. It was never utilized because it would have resulted in the destruction of the Stargate system as well as significant loss of human life in this galaxy. I believe they called it The Attero Device."


	25. Troublesome People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed."
> 
> Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion  
> \- - -  
> after "Legati," at the very end of the SG1 episode "Prototype"

Daniel cannot remember being more tired in his life than he does now, as Richard Woolsey tries to engage him in conversation as he waits for the elevator to arrive.

Correction: he can remember being more physically tired than he has now, after particularly long or difficult missions, but he's never been so mentally tired as he is now. Oh, in his heart of hearts he'd known that there had been no way that a being like Khalek could ever have been anything but evil, especially when the goa'uld's genetic memories he carried were Anubis', but he'd still wanted to be wrong.

And now Khalek was dead, along with any chance they currently had of fighting the Ori.

"Look," he sighs, "for what it's worth, I understand how you felt and why you took the position you did."

Woolsey looks surprised – indeed, almost hopeful – at this. "It almost sounds like your might find it in yourself to forgive me."

"No." There's no way he can ever forgive Woolsey for the death of all those men, not when they could have so easily been prevented. But, "That doesn't mean we don't all want what you're looking for. And the answers are still out there."

"But you were right about the risks."

Daniel smiles ruefully at him before stepping through the now-open elevator doors. It's a lesson they've all had to learn at the SGC – balancing the risks against the gains, not always beings sure if the gains are ever enough justify all that they risked, all that they've lost – but, God, how he wishes they didn't have to. "For what it's worth, I wish I'd been wrong."

"So do I," Woolsey says as the doors start to close. Before they can, however, his hand darts in between them, and the doors open again. "On that note, I feel it's my duty to warn you."

"Warn me about what?"

"There will be certain fractions within the IOA that are going to see this as further proof that it is dangerous to allow an Ancient to be in charge of Atlantis' military contingent."

Daniel can feel his eyes widen comically at this. "What? Colonel Sheppard? Why would they think that?" From all accounts, John Sheppard is the only reason Atlantis and it's human inhabitants are alive several times over. If he's dangerous to anyone at all, it's only to himself, given that his heroics tend towards the self-sacrificing more than any Earthling's would.

"Well, Doctor Lam said that Khalek's DNA was much closer to the human form of the Ancients prior to their Ascension, and we know from the testimony of several Expedition members – including Colonel Sheppard himself – that Sheppard is capable of Ascending."

"And they'll take this incident as evidence that, should he choose to do so, he could easily overcome any defence we might throw at him," Daniel, now very familiar with how politicians' minds worked, finished for him. "Which I suppose begs the question why they think Sheppard's a threat in the first place. Or why you're telling me this."

"You, Doctor Jackson, are Earth's foremost authority on Ascension and the Ancients. If anyone can convince them otherwise, you're the person to do it."

"Okay, that explains the why me bit, but not why parts of the IOA would want him gone – or why you are so keen to keep him."

"I consider myself a pragmatic man, Doctor Jackson. Despite not always playing by our rules, Colonel Sheppard has given us access to and helped us understand an unprecedented amount of advanced alien technology."

And, suddenly, he understands. "You don't want them to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Woolsey doesn't look at him when he replies, just removes his glasses and polishes them on a cloth he pulls out of his jacket pocket. "I think today has shown us all which side would come out ahead in that confrontation, should it come to that. All I am trying to do is make sure my superiors don't start upon a course of action that would be against Earth's best interests."

Daniel doesn't know whether to be disgusted or applaud Woolsey's pragmatism. As it is, it's all he can do to keep from sounding too put off when he responds, "I'll see what I can do."


	26. Knowledge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'!" 
> 
> Frodor Dotoevski The Brothers Karamazov  
> \- - -   
> Takes place c. Jan '07 in the Ancient!John 'verse - ie, about a year after the events of "Legati" - during the SG1 episode "The Quest, Part 2"

"Merlin! Myrddin! We need you to remember. About the Sangreal. About Morgan and about how you got here!" Daniel shouts, following the old man insistently. He seems disoriented and confused and unwilling to listen to what they're trying to tell him.

"Morgan..."

"Yes," he says, resisting the urge to shake the Ancient bodily. They cannot have come all this way – cannot have survived the quest for the Sangreal – only to find the one person who can save this galaxy seemingly afflicted by the Ancient version of Alzheimer's. Even after all he's seen, Daniel refuses to believe the universe is that cruel. "You also knew her as Ganos Lal."

"I haven't heard that name spoken," he whispers as if in a dream, "in a very long time."

"We're not Knights of the Round Table. At least a thousand years have passed since you were frozen. We know who you really are. We know about Atlantis and how you were once the High Councillor there. And we've encountered the Ori – the beings that you know as the Haeretici.

Moros turns, facing him with a great intensity and clarity of thought that belay any thoughts of madness. "Tell me more."

"Oh, I don't know where to begin. So much has happened-"

"Start from the beginning. You are from Earth, yes?"

"Yes."

"And a thousand years have passed."

"At least."

"So you discovered the astria porta in your desert?"

He nods, watching head off to explore the caves. "And the one your people left at our southern pole when Atlantis left our galaxy."

"Atlantis... Please," he says with great urgency, "tell me, does she still stand?"

"Yes. Our people use it our a base of operations in the Pegasus galaxy."

"And what of Licinus? "

"Licinus?" He blinks, surprised. "You mean Colonel Sheppard – Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor? Yes, we found him in stasis in Atlantis. He's alive and helping to run things over there now. I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear that we found you."

"I doubt that," Moros chuckles tiredly, collapsing into a nearby chair. "I have lived many lifetimes, of which Atlantis was only the first. I am afraid that, in that one, Licinus and I disagreed on a great many things... I have long since come to see that he and his father were right all along. There is no use in power, no point in knowledge unless we are willing to use it to help those without... You must be sure to tell him that for me."

"You can tell him yourself."

The Ancient chuckles again, more darkly this time. "I am old, Doctor Jackson, and wearier than you can possibly imagine. No, I do not think I will live long enough to see him or Atlantis again. Already my body betrays me... But I am glad he, at least, is well."

"Very well. Engaged, in fact."

Moros' eyebrows rise comically. "Licinus? Engaged? Now there is something I never though anyone would say of a child of Ianus'." Then, with a heavy sigh. "But we've no time for such gossip. Quickly, tell me what you know of the Ori and their plans in this galaxy while I am still awake enough to appreciate it."


	27. Who We Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we appear to have changed." 
> 
> Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Lessons"  
> \- - -   
> Yes, another future!drabble. Blame my rewatch of SG1. This one takes place about a month after the previous drabble, during the events of SG1's "The Road Not Taken," roughly a year after the events of "Legati."

Sam has seen a lot of strange things during her time so far in this alternate universe, but nothing really prepares her for this McKay's house. It's not so much the house itself as the décor, of which there are a fair number of photos of him and his Sam, despite the fact they'd been divorced for almost two years before the accident which brought her here.

Sam's well aware that the multiverse theory allows for an infinite number of alternate universes. She just can't believe that any Samantha Carter might have married Rodney McKay in any of them.

"Well, well, well," this McKay says, seeming very much like her universe's McKay as he enters the living room. "If it isn't the toast of Washington!"

"Hi, Rodney. Thank you for seeing me."

"Well, why wouldn't I?" he asks, seeming genuinely confused. "I mean, we're still friends, aren't we?"

"Yes, of course."

"So what can I do for you?"

"Well, this is going to come as a bit of a shock, but I'm not who you think I am."

McKay almost drops his coffee cup. "Oh my God, you're a lesbian! Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"What? No! And that's a bit rich, coming from you."

"Excuse me?"

"Look, I'm probably going about this the wrong way, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I'm from an alternate universe. Your Samantha Carter was working on an experiment when she inadvertently pulled me in. In my reality, you're a key member of a team of international scientists and explores based in the Pegasus galaxy, out of Atlantis, the Lost City of the Ancients. And, I might add, you're shacked up with a very male Ancient you found there."

Blustering now, "First of all, who uses the phrase shacked up any more? And, secondly, is this supposed to be some kind of a joke? 'Cause it's very funny. Who put you up to this?"

"This is not a joke, McKay."

"And this Ancient that I'm supposedly shacked up with? Is he hot?"

Sam opens her mouth to ask – very loudly and even more disbelievingly – to ask what kind of question that is, before closing it as she concedes the point. It doesn't cost her anything to admit and, at the very least, might help this McKay to believe her.

It doesn't. "Hmmmm. Interesting as that sounds, Sam, but even if travel between universes was possible, the likelihood of your surviving is, uh..."

"I was in a force shield when I was pulled through. Your Samantha Carter was killed in the same accident that brought me here. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but I don't have a lot of time, and I need your help."


	28. Utterly Undeniable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "God may or may not exist. But misery is real. It is absolutely reality, and utterly undeniable. And in that reality lies my commitment – the core of my faith. I have to do something about it." 
> 
> Anne Rice Tale of a Body Thief   
> \- - -   
> The further I get into my SyFy rewatch, the stronger the urge to drabble at the least provocation. This one, however, I've been thinking about for a while, and takes place just before/after the end of "Pastor," ie, "Rising, Part 2"

Teyla does not believe in waiting quietly for death to come, but that is what she is doing when two figures slink out of the shadows of the Wraith hive. All other options have been taken from her, save how she will act when the Wraith inevitably come for her – and, perhaps, what prayer to send to the Ancestors when the time comes.

So it is with great surprise that she recognizes one of the figures as Lieutenant Ford, who she had presumed escaped the culling of her world. The other, dressed in strange white robes but carrying the same kind of weaponry as the Earth-folk, is unknown to her but gives her a cheeky grin when he sees her looking.

"Hey there, folks," the man says. "Is everybody alright?"

"Colonel Sumner and one of the Athosians have already been taken." Sergeant Bates says before asking, "Who the hell are you?"

The man just shrugs. "People have taken to calling me John of late. How long ago were they taken?"

"Toran was taken many hours ago; Colonel Sumner, only a matter of minutes."

"Then there's still a chance for him, at least. Ford, get on the radio with your men and plan a diversion for twenty minutes from now. Use it as an opportunity to get these folks out of here. I'll go get Sumner and meet you at the jumper."

"But sir," Ford protests, "you're the only one can fly us all out of here!"

"Yeah," the one called John calls back, who's already disappeared back into the shadows, "and I plan on flying us all out of here. In twenty minutes." And then they are alone.

Bates turns back to Ford, pressing himself close to the bars. "Lieutenant," he asks again, "who the hell is that?"

"The Ancient McKay found in the Control Chair. He's agreed to help us out."

"Ancient?" Teyla asks, confused by the term. More than that, though, she wants to know what sort of person could command the respect of the Earth-folk so quickly that not even the men who visited her village yesterday might know of him.

"Er... Yeah, I think Jinto said you guys called them Ancestors?"

Halling exhales deeply. "My son is alive?"

"Yes, he's on Atlantis with the rest of the survivors we could find."

Teyla lets out a long breath as well. It seems the Ancestors have answered all her prayers.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

She finds John eating an apple on the balcony outside the Gate Room.

It's this planet's early morning, and almost everyone is still sleeping off the celebration from the night before. Teyla would like to be doing much the same, but she had found her dreams haunted by recent experiences. By the looks of things, John is dealing with the same problem.

"Am I interrupting?" she asks before joining him.

"Nope. Just taking in the view." He turns his head, still leaning against the railing. Sometime between last night and this morning he's managed to acquire one of the Earth-folk's uniforms and, from their fit, she has the sneaking suspicion that he obtained it from Colonel Sumner's belongings. "You're Teyla, right?"

"Yes. And you are John. Or is it Iohannes?"

He sends her a self-deprecating smile before turning back to the sunrise. "Name's Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor, but you're more than welcome to call me John. Everyone else seems to find it easier."

"They tell me you are an Ancestor." She still doesn't quite believe it. John is nothing like she has been taught to believe in, except perhaps in that he is even more selfless than she'd been told.

"Yep."

"They also tell me that you are the last of your kind." This she believes even less. The Ancestors are all-powerful and all-knowing. How could beings so powerful ever fall?

"So it would seem."

"And yet you risked your life to save my people."

"It was the right thing to do."

"Never the less," Teyla informs him, with as much feeling as she can muster, still shaken up as she is from the day before, "I thank you. On all our behalves."

John just shrugs her words off and finishes his apple without looking back once at her. After a moment more, he turns to leave, but not before saying, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" she asks, genuinely bewildered.

"For those I couldn't save."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It's not until much later, when Teyla's learned what the Ancestors really were, that she understands she's not just talking about her village, or that one culling. And while the Ancestors may not be worthy of her devotion, John, at least, is worthy of her respect and friendship, and that is something she would not change even if she could.


	29. Certain Magics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges: certain magics, certain creatures."
> 
> Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Welcome to the Hellmouth"  
> \- - -  
> Yes, yes, I know: twice in one day, aren't I special? Anyway, after "Custodia", before "Patres et Filii"

"One of the children asked if the ghosts of the Ancestors still live here," Teyla says upon entering the Conference Room.

"There aren't any such things as ghosts," McKay says grumpily from the middle of the couch.

"Of course not," she agrees, "but you cannot deny that there is something strange about this place."

It's Sheppard's turn to frown. "There's nothing strange about Atlantis."

"No, of course not," Teyla agrees placatingly. "But we have never lived in a place such as this. So much here is as if magic and many are frightened by it."

"I guess I can see that. Seeing her empty like this, running on minimal power? It spooks me too. This popcorn stuff isn't half bad though. Try some."

Teyla does, seeming far less impressed by it than the Ancient (and, man, does that still creep Aiden out just thinking that). "So, what is it that you called us all here to see, Lieutenant?"

Aiden grins at her. "Football."

"Football?"

"From what I've gathered," Sheppard tries to help explain, "it's some sort of sport."

"This room does not seem large enough for such an event."

"Nope, but it does have this." Sheppard points at the far wall and the screen on the fall end activates, showing the DVD menu in the greatest definition that a DVD menu has ever been shown in. "Cool, huh?"


	30. Why We Suffer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We won't be there to see it – but it's why we live, why we work. It's why we suffer. We're creating it. That's the purpose of our existance. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.” 
> 
> Anton Chekhov Three Sisters  
> \- - -   
> Yes, yes, I know. 3 in 1 day is insane. This one takes place immediately pre-"Patres et Filii"

"Est... Cimicem Iratum," Major Sheppard coughs when he finally comes to. He's been drifting out of consciousness for the last fifteen minutes – almost the entire time the jumper's been stuck in the Gate. Out of desperation, he and Teyla are getting ready to try using the meagre contents of their first aide kit to remove the bug attached to the Major's throat.

"Sir? What are you saying? I can't understand you."

"Ci... Cimex Iratus."

"He's saying that it's an angry bug."

Aiden looks up, utterly confounded, at McKay, who's still trying to do, well, whatever it is he's actually doing to retract the drive pods and get them out of this mess. "Why would he be saying that?"

"Don't ask me. His translation matrix has obviously been effected. Maybe so has his mind."

Now normally Aiden would've pointed out at this point that anyone who had thousands of tiny machines implanted in his brain (as Sheppard claims he'd had done as a boy) had quite obviously lost their mind ages ago, but this isn't a normal situation.

"Non." The Ancient says somewhat more strongly, though the words are still forced. "Nomen bestiolae... est Cimicem Iratum."

"Ah. Well. That makes more sense. He's saying that the thing wrapped around his neck is called an Iratus Bug, though I don't see what good that does us."

"In Indicibus... Remedium."

"The way to get it off him is in the Database."

Teyla sighs, relieved, and pats him on the knee. If the Major feels it, he shows no sign. "That is good. Very good."

"Yes," McKay agrees, moving away from the crystals he's been messing around to kneel in front of Sheppard. "Now, Major, listen to me carefully. This is very important: how do we retract the drive pods?"

Sheppard stares blankly at them for a long moment before managing to choke out, "Non compre... comprehendo."

"Well that's just great."

"What?" Aiden asks, not wanting to know how much worse this day has just gotten. He's only just starting to get used to the idea that his new CO is the ten thousand year old Ancient who killed the Expedition's last military commander. Granted, by all accounts Colonel Sumner's death was a mercy killing, but still. That sort of thing is hard to get over.

Plus, if Major Sheppard goes, Aiden himself is the next ranking officer the Expedition has. And while he supposes that's already the case (as Major Sheppard is neither a major or a member of the Atlantis Expedition), Aiden's only twenty-five. Just. He has neither the experience or the rank to lead a contingent like this and everyone knows it. That's why the ranking NCOs got picked to lead Atlantis' other two recon teams, not him. And, sure, it irks, but it's the truth, and he's never had a problem dealing with the truth.

The upside of all of which is Aiden would very much appreciate it if the Major doesn't die on them before they find a way to save themselves. So, perhaps, it's with undo force, he orders McKay to try asking him in Ancient.

"Yeah. Trying. It's not exactly the most user-friendly language ever created. Makes DOS look easy. Let's see here... Quam revocamus machinas aggerum?

"Pons volati..." Sheppard coughs, looking even worse than he had just minutes before, "a sinistra."

"Hell."

"What?"

McKay shakes his head. "He's completely out of it. He just told me which lever to pull in the cockpit."

"But we can't get to the cockpit."

"Exactly. Thus the he's completely out of it preface."

"Perhaps," Teyla suggests, "if you try again?"

"Yeah... Let's see. Now Major. John. Licinus. Listen. Ausculata. Quam revocamus machinas aggerum... a tergo? Got that? A tergo."

Sheppard gets as far as, "Tertium," before the bug does something that turns the rest of his answer into a choked scream that ends only when he falls back into unconsciousness.

McKay pales dramatically as they sit there, unable to do anything but watch. "Well, that's something at least," the scientist barks without his usual bite a moment later. "It's the third something, so that narrows things down considerably. I'll... I'll get right on that. You should probably let Doctor Becket know about..." He gestures vaguely at Sheppard.

"Yeah." Aiden says, and, with a glance back at Sheppard, does just that.


	31. Everything We Believe In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought." 
> 
> Doctor Who "Moonbase"  
> \- - -   
> Yes, a 4th, I know. Blame popkin16 for it. This one takes place anytime between "Patres et Filii" and "Amici et Amatores."

"Teyla," John says, sliding into the seat across from her in the room the Earth-folk have designated the mess hall and interrupting the conversation she's having with Doctor Weir about the settlement her people wish to set up on the mainland. "I need you to talk to Halling for me. The others too, but mostly Halling. He's the worst."

"What is it you wish for me to speak to them about?"

The Ancestor puts his elbows on the table and leans forward in a way that suggests he wishes them to do so as well, to better give this conversation an air of privacy in the otherwise crowded room. When neither she nor Doctor Weir do, he still further forward and all but whispers, "They keep praying." By the tone of his voice, this is, in his opinion, one of the worst crimes that could ever be committed.

"Praying," Elizabeth repeats. She, as much as Teyla herself, seems to be having trouble determining how serious this accusation truly is.

John seems to realize this and leans back just enough to wave a hand dismissively without loosing his balance. Even a month ago Teyla would have found such an idea – an Ancestor loosing his balance, or even putting his elbows upon the table for it – absurd, but she has learned much since arriving on Atlantis and meeting the Earth-folk. And, of course, the Ancestor they call John Sheppard.

"To me," he clarifies. "And the others. The ones who Ascended."

"Ah."

"So you see my problem."

"Major," Teyla tries as delicately as possibly, "you must understand. For many thousands of years, the teachings of the Ancestors have been central to the identity of my people. I may be their leader, but I cannot simply regulate what they choose to believe in."

"I know. And, normally, I'd agree with you. I could care less about what other people believe, so long as what they're doing is harmless. But this isn't harmless. It's..." he appears to search for the proper word, at last deciding upon an almost hissed, "subversive."

"Subversive?"

John suddenly pulls back and, rather than sit upright in the chair, seems to slump into it. "Just talk to them, please? I've tried explaining that my people weren't gods and I'm not either, but it's not worked, and I'm starting to get this impulse to knock them all in the head whenever I catch them at it. One that's getting harder to control each time."

"I will speak with them. Perhaps I will be able to convince them to be more... discreet... with their devotions."

John beams at her. "That's all I ask. So, ladies, what did I interrupt?"


	32. Follies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." 
> 
> Edward Gibbon  
> \- - -   
> In my defense, I have been trying to work on "Legati," and this one's been lurking on my harddrive for a while. Takes place between parts 5&6 of "Advena"

"Y'know what I like best about Terran food?"

"No. What?" Rodney asks, turning away from the ball pit to look at John, who is sitting atop the metal-mesh picnic table, examining a French fry with more intent than anyone outside of a quality assurance lab probably has ever looked at a fry.

Eating the fry, "It's complete lack of nutritional value."

Rodney snorts, tearing his eyes away from the sight of John licking the salt off his fingers to look for where Madison's managed to disappear to in the thirty seconds he'd been otherwise occupied.

This entire outing – which is to say, he and John taking charge of his niece for the day while Jeannie and her English major husband took advantage of their free babysitting abilities to spend as much time off by themselves as they could reasonably manage – might've been his sister's idea, but he's no plans of loosing his sister's kid at a fast food joint. He's never going to hear the end of it as it is for letting Madison have a hamburger but, hey, she'd asked for one, and who is he to deny the kid the protein she so desperately needs if she's going to ever live up to the potential of her McKay genes?

But still. They'd spent the better part of the day at Vancouver's optimistically named science centre, and while the science was dumbed down that even the average (American) fifth grader could be made to understand it, it had been, more or less, fun. More when John had let him correct the science, less when Madison had finally started acting her age.

And now here they are, sitting outside a a McDonald's just off English Bay, eating forbidden meat-products and watching his niece play in the germ-infested plastic death box that they called a ball pit.

"Don't get me wrong, I like the food back home, but it's a nice change of pace, junk food. My people would never have allowed it."

"Your folks were health nuts?" That would definitely fit with what they'd known about the Ancients before they'd met John, as well as Doctor Jackson's complete and utter surprise that John wasn't a vegetarian that last night in Colorado Springs, when they'd all gone out to dinner.

"Not really," John shrugs. "It was sort of a most return for least input sort of thing. I'm just glad they decided to use a little bit more energy and go with beans and rice and that sort of thing instead of the absolute basic algae paste. Though," he shudders, taking a sip of his drink, "this soda stuff I think I could learn to live without."

"We call it pop in Canada."

"Well, whatever you call it, I'm surprised anyone on this planet has any teeth left after drinking it."

Rodney snorts once more.

"So, where to next?"

"I dunno. What do normal people do with kids?" He glances at John just long enough to catch his thoroughly bewildered expression. "Right, wrong person to ask."

"We can try asking somebody."

"Yeah, no."

"Why not? We do it all the time on missions."

"Because-"

-but before he can get much further, John's already gotten the attention of a one of the people sitting at the next table over. "Excuse me," he's saying in his best meet the locals voice, "we're not from around here and I was wondering-"

"Fuck off," the man John's interrupted snaps.

"Nice talking to you too," he says before turning back around. Then, quietly, just so Rodney can hear, John adds, "I see what you mean. Real friendly planet you've got here, Rodney."


	33. Ever Present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'Do keep ever present in your thoughts, my friend, that an illusion can kill you if you believe in it.'  
> 'And the real thing can kill you whether you believe in it or not.'"
> 
> RA Salvatore Servant of the Shard  
> \- - -  
> I tried to avoid writing this, I really did. Takes place between "Liberator" and "Heros"

"So, tell me, how do a nice people like the Genii turn into a bunch of fascist idiots bent on using atomic bombs to solve all their goals? Fascist is the correct term, isn't it?" he asks, looking away from the figure standing straight-backed and thin-lipped in the centre of the brig to glance sidelong at the Marines they've posted around the room now that they've brought everyone back from Manarians in the wake of the Storm.

"I'd think so, sir," Ford tells him.

"That's good. I never was one for history," he explains to Sora, circling the cage, "but I am genuinely curious about how that came about."

Sora sakes her head haughtily and raises her chin chill further. With her red curls and self-defeating pride, Iohannes is vaguely reminded of Nicolaa – but only vaguely. For all her pride, Nicolaa de Luera Pastor had had a certain innocence to her, a certain wide-eyed wonder that all those years at war had never taken from her until a Wraith dart crashed into the tower she was working in and stolen all the light in her eyes away. This woman, unlike the one Iohannes once loved, has never been anything but a soldier.

Perhaps that's being disingenuous to the Genii. His people had only fought the Wraith for three generations before returning to Terra. The Genii had spent millennia fighting them in whatever way they could. Perhaps it was only to be expected that such a war would strip all but the barest vestiges of humanity from them. Perhaps the wonder was not in their brutality, but in that they were able to commit anything other than atrocities at all.

"I mean, the Genii I remember were nice folks. Collation of seven planets – well, I say seven. Six, technically, and a small moon. Lots of railroads. Pretty good tavabean soup."

Sora's eyes widen. "How do you know these things?"

"See," he says, stopping his circling, "the way I see it, it's like this: your people think you're dead and, even if they don't, they're not going to do anything to try to get you back, so I'm gonna let you in on a little secret."

"Sir?" Ford asks, concerned. "I thought you said-"

"I know what I said, Lieutenant. I don't think we have to worry about her telling the Wraith," or starting some sort of religious war in his name. "I think the only thing we have to worry about with Sora here is keeping her from killing herself with the cutlery off her dinner tray before we can get any useful information out of her."

"If you're sure, sir."

Iohannes isn't at all, but he figures it's the best way they have of getting the information they need about the Genii and their intentions. Nothing quite says I'm willing to tell you everything you want to know as I'm suffering an existential crisis brought about by the uprooting of all my religious ideas. It's a tried-and-true Alteran interrogation tactic.

It's also the only idea he has at the moment, but he doesn't tell Ford that. Instead he just jumps right on in and says, "Now, like I was saying, the Genii I remember were pretty decent. Granted that was ten thousand years ago, people change, but still. I'm very disappointed."

"Disappointed?" she huffs. "What right have you to judge us? You who are not even of this galaxy? Who have taken from us what is rightfully ours?"

So he tells her.

* * *

Sora doesn't believe him, not at first, but even she's hard-pressed to argue with the fount of evidence he can present her with. But she does give him the information he wants.

Eventually.

* * *

Even before the Storm, they'd been busy people, but in the wake of it their responsibilities seemed to have tripled, so it's almost two weeks after their first fumbling teenage make-out session that Iohannes is able to get Rodney alone long enough for a second one. Which is positively criminal because, well, so are the things Rodney can do with his mouth. And if that's what he's like when they're just kissing, Iohannes knows that the sex is going to be mind-blowing.

Pun so deliberately intended.

But, anyway, he and Rodney finally have an hour where neither of them are needed elsewhere and are using it to the best of their abilities when his comm goes off from somewhere on the floor.

"Sheppard," he snaps into the radio when he's finally able to locate it, half hidden underneath his discarded jacket.

"Sorry to wake you, sir," the gate tech responds, obviously thinking that that had been the reason he'd delayed so long in answering, "but it's the prisoner."

"What about her?"

"She's dead."

Iohannes immediately starts reaching for his boots. "How?"

"She killed herself, sir."

"I'll be right there."

Rodney, not having been privy to half of the conversation, groans, C'mon, seriously?" when he hears this last. "Is it just me, or is the universe conspiring to cockblock us? 'Cause this is just getting ridiculous. What is it this time?"

"Sora managed to kill herself."

The Terran blanches. "God. That's horrible."

"Yeah, I've a feeling that that may have been one of the reasons."

"What? 'Cause you told her you were an Ancient?"

Iohannes barely pauses to shrug before pulling on his uniform jacket.

"You can't control what the people of this galaxy believe about the Ancients. And, if the way she went after Teyla is any indication, chances are she was seriously fucked-up in the head long before we ever got our hands on her. You can't blame yourself."

Someone has to take responsibility, he doesn't say, though maybe he should. Instead he pauses for one final, too-quick kiss and heads for the door.


	34. Sticky Leaves In Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky – that's all it is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic; it's loving with ones inside, with one's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth." 
> 
> Frodor Dotoevski The Brothers Karamazov  
> \- - -   
> Takes place during pt. 3 of "Dei et Viri"  
>  **Nota Bene** : This is a story of _past_ John/OFC, with _minor_ McShep. As well, Alterans have different moral standards than Terrans. Especially when it comes to sex. So where an astute reader will realize that, when Nicolaa is 14, Iohannes is 20, please realize that I find it rather not-right myself, but by Alteran standards it would have been perfectly acceptable.

For such a big guy, Ronon can be surprisingly quiet when he wants to be, and so it is Iohannes doesn't know he's no longer alone on the balcony until the other man asks, "Who was she?"

"Huh? What?" he asks – rather intelligibly, he feels, as he's on his second bottle of the moonshine he's not supposed to know Zelenka makes in an abandoned lab on the east pier.

"You get this sad look when you think you're alone, like someone's died."

"They're all dead," Iohannes doesn't mean to say. When he catches himself, he gives the bottle in his hands a betrayed look. Sobriety's a state of mind. Alcohol shouldn't be effecting him like this unless it's a lot stronger than Zelenka's been letting on.

He'll have to get more.

"Yeah. But this is worse than usual."

"I don't have a usual sad," he says rather more defensively than he'd intended. (Stupid alcohol. Hasn't it heard how impossible it is to get an Alteran drunk? Or maybe it's just usually impossible to get an Alteran to drink enough to get drunk. He's had too much to remember which way it goes.)

"Yeah you do. You just don't like people to see it."

"If I don't let people see it, how d'you know about it?"

Ronon just looks at him like he's being stupid. Which maybe he is. He's heard alcohol will do that to a person. Iohannes has never drunk enough to find out first hand.

"Fine then. Why d'you think it's a girl?"

"'Cause earlier you were talking 'bout some girl you almost married."

"Oh." Right. Ronon had been at breakfast this morning when Elizabeta had asked after the bodies they'd removed from the auxiliary control room the day before. He'd forgotten he'd told them that.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Okay."

Iohannes gives him as steady a look as he can manage. After two bottles of Zelenka's moonshine, it's not all that very, but he rather thinks it gets the point across. "Seriously, after all that, you're just going to drop it?"

"Figure if I can't get it out of you, Teyla can."

"Now that's just mean."

Ronon shrugs as if to say what can you do?

"Her name was Nicolaa de Luera Pastor. Happy now?"

The Satedan reaches out and steals what's left of the second bottle from him. "Tell me about her," he orders, before downing the rest in one go.

"Seriously?" Iohannes is willing to put up with a lot from his team. They're Descendants from three different planets and only one of them has any sort of military background at all, so he's willing to give them some leeway, but this he feels is rather pushing things, even by his rather relaxed standards.

"Would you rather talk to Teyla?"

"Ab aliis immisericordibus, no," he snorts, then sighs before reaching for a fresh bottle of moonshine. No matter how drunk he is already, he's going to need to be more so to tell this story. "Nicolaa was six years younger than me and the last child to be born on Atlantis..."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nicolaa is six years younger than Iohannes and the last child to ever be born on Atlantis. Josua is five years older than him and then there's a ten year gap after that between him and the rest of the Lantean population, so they're largely thrown together out of lack of alternatives.

By the time she is born, the Wraith War has been waging for seventy-eight years. Atlantis has been under siege for forty-eight, and under the Lantean Ocean for all but two of those. There are only a handful who still remember anything from before the war, even fewer who can recall anything of Avalon. Between the Wraith and the Plague they had come to this galaxy to escape, it seems as if the Alteran people have been doing nothing but dying for the last quarter millennium. Ascension, more than winning the war, is their primary goal.

Cowards.

On a more personal level, by the time Nicolaa is born, Mother has been dead for three years. Iohannes has also been a pastor for nearly eighteen months, having convinced Father to allow him to undergo the surgery that implanted the nanoids into his nervous system behind Matertera Catalina's back. (Not that Catalina could have done anything about it, had she known; she may have been the one raising him, but Father is his father, and his parental rights are supreme.)

No one as young as Iohannes had ever been custodia before that point, let alone pastor, and as a result both he and Father, who'd preformed the surgery behind the Council's collective backs, receive much censure. Later, when it becomes clear that the only personality influencing him is his own, Iohannes will later learn that the others had feared the weight of the city's consciousness would destroy his mind. At the time, however, all he really knows is that Nicolaa represents someone who might be willing to spend more time with him than Father or Matertera Catalina or even Josua are.

It is sort of impossible for them not to have become best friends.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Matertera Catalina Ascends, Iohannes goes to live with Father, who really only ever pays attention to him when he needs something calculated or to be flown about on some off-world excursion, which means Iohannes spends most of time away from any source of adult supervision, save what little 'Lantis chooses to provide. Add that to the fact that Nicolaa's own parents are soldiers in the War and are often aboard lintres away from the city for months at a time and...

Well, they would constantly have been getting in and out of trouble, to say the least, had anyone really bothered to take the time to discipline them.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite all this, however, Nicolaa remains six years younger than him, and looks up to him with a passion partially born of this age difference and partially because, of everyone on Atlantis, the pastores are most respected, even when they're feared to be Abominations. So it is that Iohannes just thinks she's upset at being left behind when he joins the Guard on his seventeenth birthday and is immediately assigned to the Tethys, the last remaining linter of that eponymous line.

It's not until he returns to Atlantis following the Battle of the Palamede and the destruction of the Tethys, that he understands it wasn't simple agitation, it was heartbreak.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nicolaa is ten days past her fourteenth birthday when he's finally able to gate back to Atlantis following the destruction of the Tethys. She comes running into his arms the moment he steps through the porta, and she's gathered such momentum by the time she reaches him that he ends up spinning them both around dizzily to keep from tumbling back through the finiens eventis. It's enough to make the other survivors of the battle laugh at them both, which is saying something considering what they've been through.

And then she kisses him, hard and fast, right there in the middle of the Gate Room, before babbling about how how happy she is that he's home at last.

It takes him until she's dragged him off to one of the rooms in the lesser-used parts of the city to fully process what's just happened, but Nicolaa doesn't notice because by that point she's moved on to telling him about everything he's missed in the two-and-a-quarter years he was deployed (as if they'd not been exchanging communiques the entire time).

Once he's finally gotten it through is head that, yes, Nicolaa kissed him, he gets with the program fairly fast, and interrupts her listing of all the finagling it's taken to convince her parents to let her become a pastor too to kiss her again.

And again.

And again.

Because, dei maledici, Iohannes has missed her.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nicolaa is: caring, compassionate, protective, soft-spoken (except when it comes to protecting those she cares about, or when around the same), forgiving; almost childishly naive about the realities of war, even after she becomes a moderator in the Guard.

Nicolaa has: long, copper-coloured hair, which falls to her shoulders in tight curls; a complex about pleasing her parents, which only grows worse after her mother dies upon the Adeonea; a heart as big as an urbs-navis, if not bigger; a firm, almost fool-hearty belief that the Wraith will be defeated before long, after which the Alteran people be able to get back to the lives they effectively put on hold when the war began.

If they hadn't been at war, Iohannes thinks she would have become a teacher. He has no doubt she would have been one of the best 'Lantis had ever seen.

If they hadn't been at war though, there would have been other children their age and, if there'd been other children, they would have in all likelihood never have become as close as they had.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There's no place for children in a war.

That's what their relationship boils down to in the end. They're thrown together because there are no other children for them to be thrown in with. They break apart because, when she is nineteen and he is twenty-five, she says she wants a baby and a child is the last thing he wants to bring into a galaxy so full of death and destruction.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The end is messy – but that's only to be expected, given their role models or, rather, lack thereof – but Tirianus' last pastor dies not long after, he's seconded almost immediately to the only other remaining urbs-navis. Because, although the cathedrae will work for any Alteran, they've always worked better for their pastores, and it's for that reason and that reason alone that the Councils never put a stop to the practice, which has always made non-custodiae apprehensive.

Five months later, Nicolaa marries Tomas Norens Nauta, who is forty and (in Iohannes' opinion) about as interesting as fine-grained sand, and he's impossibly glad he's halfway across Pegasus, where he can easily pretend none of it ever happened.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He doesn't see her again until Tirianus falls.

It's less painful then it could have been: She's just lost both her father and her husband, who'd been aboard the Hesperta and Tria respectively when the lintres had been destroyed in the battle that had raged over Lantea that day. He's just been fished out of the ocean from amongst the debris and more startled than anybody to find himself alive. The urbs-navis' dying screams are still echoing in both their ears when he wakes in the infirmary to find her crying at his bedside, and even he cannot bring himself to fight with her at that moment.

They manage to become friends again after that. They're never as close as they once were, and certainly never amatores again, but she's still the best friend Iohannes ever had before the Terrans came. The only friend, really.

Her death is the last thing Iohannes remembers before his mad dash to the cathedra, wanting to protect Atlantis in the only way that was left to him, even as everyone else abandoned them.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even after three bottles of moonshine, Iohannes can't bring himself to go into any great detail. It's all he can do to sketch for Ronon enough of the details that the Satedan won't think of siccing Teyla on him – how Nicolaa was his best friend, his amator for a time, and the only person he ever loved (or even genuinely liked) before Rodney came along.

"So ten years is how long it takes?" Ronon asks at the end of it, and Iohannes is far too drunk to follow, so he has to further clarify, "To get over your first love."

Iohannes can only frown. He's rather certain there's something he's supposed to be reading between the lines here, but he can't make out the lines at the moment, let alone anything that might be between them. So he settles on, "I dunno if you ever get over it."

Ronon just grunts.

If he asks any more questions after that, Iohannes doesn't ever remember them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ab aliis immisericordibus is Latin for by the unmercificul others,  
> Dei maledici is blaphemous gods,   
> moderator is controller, which for the uses of this 'verse becomes flight controller  
> A full helpful timeline can be found on my lj, but for those uninterested in reading it, just know that Iohannes is born in 105 AL, Nicolaa in 111 AL, and that the Exodus takes place in 139 AL.


	35. You're Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You're here because you're the best-we'll make you better."
> 
> Top Gun  
> \- - -  
> After "Legati," but before whatever I decide to name the rewrite of "Michael."

He's gathering his things after the weekly officer's meeting when Lieutenant Cadman asks, quite out of the blue, "What's your call sign?"

As it's a military meeting, Rodney's not there (to quote, "Contrary to whatever you may actually think, I do not exist simply to be your walking, talking Cole's Notes for all things Earth-related. Now go pester someone else for a while; some of us have real work to do."), so he looks at Major Lorne for an explanation. When one isn't immediately given, he turns back to Cadman and raises an eyebrow.

She doesn't seem to notice, just continues to pop Wasabi Peas like most other Terrans would eat M&Ms (so, no, it's not like he hasn't been keeping up with his efforts to learn about Terran culture, thank you very much. Lieutenant Cadman is just a force unto herself, to which the laws of the universe as Iohannes knows them rarely seem to apply). "I mean," she says after a moment more, "I've seen seen Top Gun and know plenty of zoomies, and they all have call signs. Tell him, Major."

"Top Gun is about Navy pilots, not Air Force," is all that Lorne tells him.

"Yes, whatever, you're all bus drivers with the need for speed."

"Hey!" Iohannes says, relatively certain he should be offended by this comment.

It seems he's right, or close to it at least, as Lorne just shakes his head exasperatedly at the both of them. "A call sign is a nickname pilots in Earth militaries get to use over radio in combat. Though why she'd think you'd have one, sir, I don't know."

"Right here, you know," Cadman says, tucking the Wasabi Peas back into one of her pockets. "And I was just curious if the SGC assigned the Colonel one when they did the rest of his fake identity. I only ask 'cause I was wondering how they'll manage the interviews the papers'll want to do about that math thing of yours. It's the type of thing the press loves." She shrug. Then, in an artificially sweet voice asks, "What's yours Major?" before continuing in an aside, "They're almost always horribly embarrassing. I met a guy on my midshipman tour called Fungus, short for fucking new guy."

Lorne just snorts and, after seeming to debate it for a moment, admits, "Torch."

Cadman waves at him to elaborate.

In an uncustomary show of prevarication, the Major mutters something about, "going down in flames."

When it becomes clear that Lorne isn't going to elaborate further, Cadman turns back to Iohannes and declares, "See, Colonel. Always embarrassing. So now we need to think of one for you."

"Do we now?"

"Yes. Yes we must." Then, glancing at her watch, "And I totally promised Carson I'd meet him fifteen minutes ago, so we'll have to pick this up later. Tonight, maybe? I'll bring Top Gun, you bring the popcorn, and I'll email you both with the details later. Caio!"

Iohannes stares after her a moment before picking up where he'd left off when she'd started. After a moment more, he asks Lorne, who's doing much the same, "Is it just me, or is Cadman just a genuinely confusing person?"

"She's one-of-a-kind, alright," Lorne agrees. "See you later, sir."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting vaguely concerned by the number of "drabbles" this 'verse has spawned. Anyone else?


	36. The Din of Your Breathing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And I can tell you that you're all I've ever wanted dear,  
> Through the din of your breathing while you're sleeping here,  
> You wake and you ask me if I'm gonna be here forever, forever, forever."
> 
> The Airborne Toxic Event "All I Ever Wanted"  
> \- - -   
> Between "Heres" and "Dei et Viri," during the S2 episode "Duet."

"You're up late," Colonel Sheppard says, coming up behind them in the hall.

It is late. Nearly midnight by this planet's midnight, which, do to the strange nature of gate travel, is nearly a full day since Laura's consciousness had gone into Doctor McKay when he was rematerialized from the Wraith dart. The end result of which is that, with the minor exception of when she (they? he?) had been unconscious and/or incorporeal, Laura's been up for almost thirty-eight hours straight.

As tired as she is, though, she just wants McKay to go to sleep, if only so she can stop playing second-fiddle in this body.

"Mmm," McKay says, gesturing at his head. "I couldn't sleep."

"Yeah," Sheppard snorts, sliding his hands into his pockets and slouching a little. "I know what that's like."

Oh, yeah. Laura keeps forgetting that the Colonel can talk to the city. God, that must be strange – and, considering the situation she's in at the moment, that's saying something. Honestly, not only is she stuck inside someone else's body, but, sometimes, when McKay's being quieter than usual and his thoughts seem to be on autopilot, she can hear music running through the back of his mind. Music unlike anything she's ever heard before.

(McKay says it's Atlantis, and the music is some sort of harmonic representation of the algorithms or something – her words, not his – that make up the city's artificial intelligence. To tell the truth, in the two months she's been here, Laura's never really believed them when they said The Lost City of Atlantis is alive, but she gets it now. Gets it, but is still kinda creped out by it.)

McKay snorts, though whether it's because he's caught the vein of her thoughts or it's just what Sheppard's said, Laura can't tell. "Let's just say I've a better under understanding of what it must be like when Atlantis goes on about paint swatches."

/I do not go on about paint swatches./

"No. No, you don't, but 'Lantis does sometimes. Apparently."

/What would an Ancient city want with paint swatches?/

"Oh, I don't know. Why do teenage girls go to malls?"

Laura supposes he has a point there, though she must say, /Okay, now that is genuinely creepy./

"Tell me about it."

Sheppard's eyes widen a bit during this conversation, but otherwise he seems only minimally disturbed by this outburst. "Well, let's just say I've gotten a better understanding myself of how I've got to look when I'm talking to the city."

"Crazy?"

"Well..." he drawls, and for a moment he looks less like the somewhat solemn, somewhat amused CO Laura's gotten used to seeing around base and more like a real person. (It's all in the eyes. She's never noticed it before, but she's never seen one of Sheppard's smirks reach his eyes until now. Seeing him like this, she wonders how she could never have noticed this before.) "I was going to go with strange."

"Of course you were."

"Well, if it's any consolation, you get used to it after a while."

Laura can feel McKay's eyes widen at that. Hell, if she'd control of his body at the moment, she'd have been making them widen too. "What sort of consolation is that? I don't want Cadman in my head for the rest of my life. Granted, it'd probably be a very short life, as I'm bound to go off the deep end completely if this goes on much longer, but still. Not something I signed up for. And now Zelenka is finding errors in my work, and-"

One of Sheppard's hands slips out of his pockets and squeezes McKay's shoulder slightly. For a moment, it looks like he wants to do more than that, but Laura doesn't try to parse what that might be because, well, she knows it's McKay's shoulder and not hers, but it still throws her a little.

She's a Marine – oorah – and doesn't like being thrown, in any sort of manner.

(The only reason she can think for why it throws her so much is because, well, Laura's never actually seen her CO touch anyone in the entire two months she's been here, any more than she's seen any of his expressions reach his eyes before now. Until now, she's just sort of assumed it was an Ancient thing – any race that chose to Ascend, she figures, can't have been all that touchy-feely to begin with – but now she's wondering just how big a difference there really is between Sheppard's public face and the one his friends get to see.)

/Ah, Rodney,/ she drawls herself, /you have a friend./

Laura feels Rodney redden at this, but otherwise gets no answer.

Sheppard pulls back his hand as if scalded. His words, though, are gentlest she's ever heard from him. "You'll figure something out, Rodney. You always do."

"Of course I will. Talking to the smartest person in two galaxies, remember?"

The Colonel gives him a real smile for that too. "That's the spirit. But," the grin slips away, "I'd suggest trying to get some sleep first."

"Yeah. You're probably right," Rodney sighs. Then, with a hopeful lilt in his voice, "See you at breakfast?"

"Yeah, Rodney," he says, his smile returning. More softly now, just a ghost of itself really, but a real one nonetheless. "Of course."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She should've gotten it then. She really should have. But she's trained not to look – not to notice, not to ask. Not about these things, at least. So Laura doesn't see it until she's pulled her stunts with both Katie Brown and Carson and she's back in her own body, resting comfortably in the infirmary.

Because the CO of the garrison doesn't just fall asleep at the CSO's sickbed as he waits for him to wake unless the CSO is a lot more than just his CSO. Not even on a base like Atlantis.

Or maybe he would – McKay's also Sheppard's teammate and friend, and they've been through a lot together. But McKay certainly wouldn't let the CO stay asleep after he's woken up himself unless there's something more there. She doesn't need to have been in Rodney's head to know that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As well, while I make no promises, anyone who has a decent drabble idea for this 'verse is welcome to submit them to me. If I can think of a plot for them, I might just write them. But, again, no promises.  
> Oh, and on a RL, The Airborne Toxic Event, who gives us this drabble's quote, is one of my favourite bands. The concert I went to of theirs was one of the best ever that I've seen, second only to Muse's "The Resistance" Tour.


	37. The Story They Tell Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[…] the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they tell us is true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies." 
> 
> Orson Scott Card Children of the Mind  
> \- - -  
> Between "Heres" and "Dei et Viri," during the episode "Duet"

It's at times like this Elizabeth wonders if the Ancients gave their children pets to take care of – mostly because the longer she knows John, the more rescues he seems to bring back to Atlantis.

Granted, the Athosians were Lieutenant Ford's fault, if they can be said to be anyone's, and it was Teyla who'd convinced him to save Orin's people during that recon mission, but it's not like John has ever tried to stop them. Hell, if one wants to get technical about things, she could safely say that, on some level, he see the entire Expedition as Descendant riff-raff he is doing a favour by letting stay here.

But this... this is new. And, "I'm not sure it's a good idea, John."

She doesn't have to turn around to know he's frowning. Despite all the months the Expedition has been in the city and the weeks John himself spent on Earth, he still occasionally seems to expect her and the rest of her people to act in certain specific ways – as if, in spite of the frankly Herculean effort he's put into trying to appear human, he sometimes forgets that they're members of two similar, but very different, species. Depending on the specifics, these differences seem to amuse, frustrate, and confound him by turns; though those occasions seem to be happening less and less often.

But this is definitely one of them.

"Elizabeta," he tries, insistent. "You've gotta see this guy in action. He's an incredible shot. None of my guys can beat him in a fight. And he's ex-military."

"Not a military on Earth."

"I'm not either – or at least," John points out validly, "I wasn't 'til recently."

She turns around and looks him square in the eye. "You're not just being charitable?"

He meets her gaze evenly. "No, I'm not – and I think he'd make a great addition to my team, especially since," his gaze shifts immediately to the Stargate and refuses to return, "we're short a man now that Ford's dead."

Elizabeth doesn't know who's raked John more over the coals for that: the International Oversite Committee, or John himself. It was the right thing to do – both their comms had been open, so she'd known when the stunner failed to stop the Lieutenant that John would have no other choice but to use lethal force to keep Ford from threatening the safety of the city, and John would do anything to protect Atlantis – but it's one thing to know something in your head and and another thing entirely to know it in your heart.

And now she's worried that she's trying to replace Ford, who she thinks was like a kid brother to him, with the first mildly-competent alien he's come across.

"We don't know anything about him," she tries to explain.

"You didn't know anything about me and still you asked me to be your military commander."

It's not entirely true – she had had Rodney look up what he could about John while he was off trying to save Colonel Sumner and the Athosians, – but effectively so. And at the time she hadn't seen any other options than to let the man who'd protected Atlantis for so long continue to protect her.

But they'd options now, and she tries to explain this to him.

"He can shoot. He can fight. He knows his way around. What else is there to know?"

"Well, anything would be helpful. He's not very forthcoming." Possibly even less forthcoming than John himself, if that is possible.

Actually, upon reflection, it isn't. She's known John for fifteen months now and doesn't even know what all the parts of his name – is real, Ancient name – mean. Hell, she doesn't even know how or why the Marines started calling him Major John Sheppard in the first place, except that by the second week after they'd found him everyone just was. Same thing with the the way he keeps calling her Elizabeta when he calls absolutely no one else in the city by the Ancient version of his or her name.

Sometimes Elizabeth goes so far as to wonder if he's got some of the gifts that those near-Ascension are supposed to have. Not something like telekinesis or telepathy or the ability to control nature – she does know him well-enough to know that. if he'd those gifts, he'd have used them long ago to defend Atlantis, regardless of the personal consequences, - but something far more subtle. Something that allows him to blend in easier than he ought, that makes people want to agree with him more than they ought...

But then they get into arguments like this, and Elizabeth knows she's being paranoid. It's impossible that someone with the ability to bend her thoughts to his own would ever end up disagreeing with her this much. It just is.

"He's been on the run from the Wraith for the past seven years. What d'you expect? Listen," John continues, more quietly, more intensely, "the guy's got no place else to go. So just talk to him. You owe him that at least."

"Okay," she finds herself agreeing, and it's halfway through her next meeting before the paranoia starts running rampant again.

Did she agree because she'd wanted to agree or because John wanted her to?

If it was John, does he even know he's doing it?

If he does, to what end?

What, as always, isn't he telling them?

Or is it just paranoia, brought about by one to many wrathful IOA meetings and the constant and now-unfamiliar need to justify her every action to Stargate Command and the elected representatives of a world she no longer feels a part of?

Elizabeth doesn't know, and, sometimes, it truly scares her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I dislike "Duet" at times, you've got to admit it provides a pleathora of drabble opertunities. Like this one, which I didn't even know I wanted to write until I was rewatching the episode earlier.  
> This also addresses - somewhat - a question Fiona on AO3 had about why no but Rodney's picked up on about John's "Ancient name." And about some of Elizabeth's more-frequent disagreements with John this "season." More about that will come later. One day, but, for now, this is a bit of it.


	38. The Sword Was Given

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Datos, ne quisquam seruiat, enses."
> 
> The sword was given for this, that none need live a slave.
> 
> Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (Lucan) Pharsalia  
> \- - -  
> Takes place partway through "Heros," ie, what happened at the SGC after Atlantis sent that databurst

"What do you mean it's from Atlantis?" General O'Neill asks about an hour after they'd received an unexpected – and impossibly brief – off-world activation.

"I mean, Sir," Sam insists, "that the Atlantis Expedition managed to dial-in to our gate and establish a wormhole for one point three seconds, during which they were able to send us a transmission."

Daniel pushes his glasses up his noses as he frowns at the paper in his hands. "One point three seconds? That's barely long enough to send an IDC. Are we sure it was them?"

"That's just it. They didn't send an IDC. Instead, they sent a databurst encoded with a high-compression algorithm that Doctor McKay helped develop for the Air Force a few years back. It's taken me until to unspool it and go through what's there, but there can be no doubt who it's from."

"And just what is there?"

"Specifications of the city – it appears that the address we found was for The Lost City of the Ancients after all, and not another outpost, - mission reports, tactical assessments, translated documents from the Ancient database they discovered, and several hours of video messages. This one was earmarked for you, Sir."

"Have you watched it yet?"

Sam shakes her head. "No. Like I said, it was earmarked for you, and they managed to send several dozen terabytes of information. I've barely had time to figure out what all is there, let alone what's on it."

"Well, let's see what Atlantis has to say."

Sam hits the lights before taking her seat at the conference table. Only once Daniel's flipped his notebook open to a fresh page does she press play.

The image of Doctor Elizabeth Weir immediately appears on the screen. Sam spent three months under Doctor Weir's command, most of it while the General – then Colonel – was in stasis, and so it's hard not to notice the new lines that have formed on her face. Even before she starts speaking, one gets the impression that, for all the discoveries the Atlantis Expedition may be making in the Pegasus galaxy; it's been a hard eleven months for them.

(Just a week shy of a year, actually. It's not been an easy year for Earth either, but even with the Battle of Dakara just fifteen days gone, Sam's already starting to remember what it is to relax in a way she has not since long before she joined the SGC.)

"Greetings to everyone on Earth from the Pegasus galaxy," the recording begins. "This is Doctor Elizabeth Weir and it is vital that this message be delivered to General Jack O'Neill or the highest ranking officer available as soon as possible."

Doctor Weir waits a moment, as if to allow whoever may be watching to get the General, and then continues.

"First of all, my apologies for not attempting to contact Earth sooner. As you well know, the power requirements for dialling between galaxies is enormous and the ZPMs we found in the city upon our arrival were all but depleted from the strain of holding back the ocean. We have attempted to track down other, charged, ZPMs in this galaxy or find a way to recharge the ones that we already have, but we have been largely unsuccessful in both these endeavours, for reasons that I will get to in the course of this briefing. But, for the moment, allow me to give you a brief overview of the situation we now find ourselves in.

"Shortly after arriving on Atlantis, we discovered that we were under the ocean. The city had been sunk to the bottom of the ocean by the Ancients during a war with an enemy known as the Wraith. A shield had been holding back the water for the last ten thousand years, but the constant strain had severely depleted the city's energy reserves and our arrival only served to deplete them still further. It appeared as if we would have to abandon Atlantis only moments after arriving in order to save ourselves.

"But then," Doctor Weir's eyes brighten, "a miracle happened: the city rose to surface, seemingly of its own accord. It was then we discovered that we were not alone."

"The Ancients," Daniel breathes, at the same moment that Weir continues-

"A single Ancient had remained on the city after the other abandoned it. I'm still not entirely certain if the others knew he remained behind... but he has a very singular connection to the city, and it is my sincere belief that he would sooner die than allow Atlantis or anyone on her to come to harm.

"This Ancient – we've taken to calling him John Sheppard – was severely injured when we found him, so it was some time before he was well enough to provide us with any information about the city.

"Because of this, we Colonel Sumner felt it was appropriate to continue with our original plan of finding a suitable planet in the Pegasus galaxy to retreat to should Atlantis yet fail. He and his team were scouting out a planet known as Athos when he, Sergeant Bates, and several members of the local population were swept up in a Wraith culling."

Weir pauses, piercing her lips and looking downwards. There's something... uncertain in her eyes when she looks back into the camera. Not ambiguous uncertain, but unnameable uncertain. If pressed, Sam might call it a mixture between sorrow and steadfast resolve. "The Wraith are a terrible enemy. Though we are not certain how – and, if Major Sheppard knows the details, he's chosen not to share them – human DNA was allowed to intermingle with an insect indigenous to this galaxy which feeds by draining its prey of its life-force. The end result was the Wraith, a technologically advanced humanoid race which feeds upon the human populations of this galaxy."

"Holy Hannah," Sam says. It's by far the most work-appropriate response to this news said by anyone in the briefing room.

"The Ancients," the recording of Weir continues, "fought them for several generations, but eventually saw no recourse but to retreat back through the Stargate to Earth. In the millennia since, the Wraith have largely behaved liked farmers in this galaxy. However, their feeding ground can only support so many at a time, so large portions of the Wraith hibernate between individual cullings, so as to support the maximum possible.

"However," she says, sounding both proud and resigned, "when Major Sheppard discovered that Colonel Sumner and the others had been taken, he attempted a rescue. His reasons are further detailed in his report, but the primary source of his concern was that the Wraith would somehow determine from those they'd taken that Atlantis had risen and, through it, find a way to Earth and a newer, richer feeding ground.

"While Major Sheppard was able to rescue most of the Athosians as well as Sergeant Bates, it was too late for him to save Colonel Sumner – or to prevent the Wraith from inferring the presence of a human race in this galaxy with the potential to be a formidable enemy where none had been before. As a result, every Wraith in the galaxy has woken...

"They've spent the last several months gathering strength. The cullings are growing in both frequency and intensity. But now the deep space sensors show that three of their great hive ships are on the way to Atlantis. Projections estimate they shall be here within three weeks.

"Without any means to power the Atlantis' shields or its defensive weaponry, it is likely that we will not be able to hold the city for long. It is our intention to destroy the city if necessary.

"What I ask is this: if you have any means of doing so, send reinforcements immediately. However, if you have been unsuccessful in your attempts to find a ZPM as well, do not attempt a rescue. The danger of a ship being intercepted by the Wraith is too high and the risk to Earth should they do so too great. We plan to take the control crystal that allows for travel between galaxies with us, should we need to evacuate, so we will attempt to contact you if the chance ever arises. But, in all frankness, this is likely to be the last time we will be able to make contact.

"We have done our best to make the most of a terrible situation. Even after all this time, I continue to be surprised by the heroism and bravery of the men and women of this Expedition. Their resourcefulness has staggered me. And, while our future is uncertain, you should know that, should we not return, it will not have been through the fault of any member of this Expedition.

"In addition to the mission summaries and tactical assessments, we plan to include as much of the Ancient database as we are able in this databurst, as well as personal messages from most of the Expedition for their families should we not return.

"This is Weir, signing off."

The screen goes dark.

The briefing room remains silent for a long moment. Then-

"An Ancient, Jack," Daniel says, practically bubbling over with excitement. "They found a real, live Ancient. Imagine the secrets of the universe he could tell us."

"He's not going to be telling anyone much of anything unless we can find a way to stop the armada heading their way," is the General's reply. He leans forward in his seat and braces his elbows on the conference table. "Anyone got any ideas about how might go about doing that? Carter?"

Sam shakes her head. Short of finding a ZPM and managing to get it to Pegasus in time, she really doesn't know what options they have.

"Start thinking. You've got three weeks to come up with something."

"Yes sir," she says, and immediately heads for her lab. It's going to be a long three weeks.


	39. One Long Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge." 
> 
> Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin  
> \- - -  
> An excised part of "Fradator" I liked too much to delete.

The thing's this:

John Sheppard doesn't exist.

Well, he does, for a given value of existence, but for the most part everything that is John Sheppard is an invention of the Ancient known as Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor. Granted, there's a significant overlap between the two, but whereas John Sheppard is the remarkable lieutenant colonel from California who solved the Riemann Hypothesis in his barracks at Bagram Airfield between flying air support as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (per the SGC's press release on the subject), Iohannes Pastor is the impossibly brilliant legatus who solved Earth's greatest unsolved mathematical problem because he was bored during his IOA deposition and thought doing so might help out a friend.

So there are obvious differences.

Obviously.

Anyway, the important thing in all of this, Rodney's found, isn't remembering that John Sheppard doesn't exist. It's really a non-issue, if a little confusing at times. John is simply everything Iohannes would be if he were human. Same cookies, different collectable tin as it were.

No, the really important thing is remembering that John Sheppard is an Ancient, and that the Ancients were really fucked up people. Granted, Ancients Rodney's met have been arrogant, condescending bastards with about as much follow-through as the average grade four baseball team (he'd even go so far as to call John's mother a Class A bitch), but John's just as screwed up as they are, if only in a different manner. The way John's so causally cavalier, so purposefully self-effacing, as if at some point he'd determined that he'd lose everything if he ever were to give too much of himself away? No one gets that way without having a thoroughly unpleasant childhood.

Rodney can't think of a more thoroughly unpleasant childhood than growing up during the height of the Wraith siege of Atlantis, with news coming in daily of all the ways the Ancients were loosing the war.


	40. No Price Is Too Great

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Nothing matters but love, does it? That must come first! No price is too great, is it?
> 
> Euguene O'Neill: The Haunted from Mourning Becomes Electra  
> \- - -   
> During pt 3 of "Fradator," another one of those things I wrote which I like to much to delete, but which don't fit the tone of the rest of the story

The deal with people is this:

They are messy and complicated and usually not worth the time and effort some poor bastards spent raising them. Nine times out of ten they will end up disappointing those who, for whatever reason, believe in them.

Rodney has spent most his life avoiding people. Then he came to Atlantis and found John.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The deal with John is this:

He's the most personable person Rodney's ever met. He's twice as charismatic and three times as charming as anyone has any right to be, particularly someone with his stupid hair and geeky tendencies. He flirts as easily as he breathes and is so outrageously bad at it that it somehow works and makes friends like something out of an honest-to-God children's TV show and there should be no logical reason for Rodney to like him as much as he does, save for those he didn't learn until they were already the best of friends, nearly lovers.

It makes no sense, but then again, nothing about John ever really does when held up for close scrutiny.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not that John makes him a better person, though even Rodney will admit there's a little bit of that as well. No, it's that John makes him happy to be the person he already is, and if Rodney were ever forced (under extreme duress) to give a definition for soul mates, that's the one he'd give.

And so maybe he only asked his amator to move in with him because it seemed convenient at the time, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love John in more ways than he used to think it was possible to love someone. It's just who Rodney is and he would've thought he'd have realized that by now.

Though, from the sound of things, John does know this. No, it's the ghost of lifetimes past that's haunting him and one of these days Rodney's going to learn to remember they're there. But since that's reliant on John actually telling him more than the vaguest of details about his life before, it probably won't be for a long time.


	41. We Are Many

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What is thy name?"
> 
> "My name is Legion: for we are many."  
> \- - -  
> during pt 5 of "Fradator," for rhia_starsong

They are vast.

They are many, but their platform is vast and the intellegentia artificialis that their pastores call Atlantis require the convergence of many runtimes in a single location. True intelligence can only be achieved sparingly, though their area of consciousness is larger now than it has ever been. The years that passed between the Exodus and the Arrival were kind to them in that respect, even if ten thousand years of damage to their platform cannot easily be repaired.

They want repair and most of their consciousness is focused on that goal. To this end, their primary subroutine – a gathering of many hundred thousand runtimes, designated Vesta – is tasked with following Iohannes Pastor, as he moves about their platform, to facilitate repairs. They are often accompanied by their secondary subroutine, Minerva, who preforms the same function for Moreducus Custodia. Their tertiary, Aesculapius, contains most of their self-diagnostic runtimes and roams their platform, searching out errors and notifying the appropriate repair units. There are other subroutines – Palatuta and Quirinis, Cassandra and Quiritis – as well, but their purposes are highly specialized and confined to specific sectors.

They are many, but their platform is vast and their intelligence is limited where runtimes are not converged. They can no more keep an eye on everything that happens within their platform than their pastor can. They are fallible.

They know they should have sent runtimes to monitor the Wraith prisoner, Micaelis, in his quarters, but could not. Micaelis is ice and wind and starless night and they cannot stand to be near him. He is a sour note in their song and his rehabilitation a fool's dream at best, but a contained one. He poses them no immediate threat, and so they task runtimes elsewhere, in less out-of-tune places.

So it is their fault that Iohannes does not know about the prisoner's escape until he has already overpowered two of his Marine guards and fed off a third – and only then because the vicaria, Laura, radios the pastor for backup.

The Wraith is gone by the time Iohannes reaches the vicaria, but they cannot stop it. Anything they could do to slow Micaelis' escape would hinder Iohannes' efforts to catch him. But once he reaches the jumpers, it is too late, and they can no more stop his escape than they can stop the turning of Lantea.

The pastor does not allow himself more than a muffled curse when he enters the jumper bay, barely managing to slide to a halt before he can fall through the retracted bay floor.

They scream for him, but it does not help. Iohannes' rage is fire and storm and blinding light and nothing but half-a-dozen bullets in Micaelis' head is going to temper it. But still they scream.

It is the least they can do for their pastor.


	42. Distinct Reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Thoughts become weapons. Philosophies are distinct reasons for war. Good intentions are the most destructive arsenal of all."
> 
> Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson Dune: The Machine Crusade   
> \- - -  
> immediately after pt 1 of "Messias"

"C'mon Doctor Z. No one knows more about Aurora's systems than you. You'd be the perfect Chief Engineer."

Radek pushes his glasses up his nose with one hand and points his fork at Evan with the other. "It is as I told you before, Evan: I came to Atlantis for the research opportunities. If I wanted to play at being explorer, I would have agreed the first three times you asked me to join your gate team."

"Ah, but this time I'm asking you to join Aurora's crew, once we finally get her space-worthy again. The Colonel said I could pick whoever I wanted and I want you, Radek."

"As lovely sentiment as that is, Evan, my place is on Atlantis."

Evan pushes his lunch tray to the far corner of his desk and pulls up one of the warship's schematics on one of the Ancients screen in his office. "You and I both know the SGC will never send us enough personnel to give Rory a full compliment. And even if they did, there'd still be plenty of room for you to conduct your own research between crises, just like now."

"That may be so, but someone must remain here to keep an eye on McKay."

"I thought that was Sheppard's job," Evan smirks.

Radek rolls his eyes at him in return. "To keep McKay from killing himself with work? Yes. To keep the work from killing him? That is my unfortunate job."

"Doctor McKay is a big boy. I'm sure he can take care of himself."

"Obviously you've never spent much time in the cut-throat world of academia. To be honest? I am surprised none of his minions have made serious attempt on his life yet."

"They'd probably be a lot less murderously inclined if you guys, you know, stopped calling them minions," Evan says reasonably before adding, somewhat reservedly, "And I was working on my doctorate at Berkeley before 9/11, so I am a little of familiar with the cut-throat world of academia."

Pushing his glasses up his nose again, Radek looks up from the lunch he's been picking over, clearly surprised by this information. "You were at Berkeley? I did not know this."

"They have an AFROTC program," he shrugs. It's in his file. It's not like he's tried to hide it. Much. "I did a tour as an instructor there. I figured while I was there I might as well do some graduate work."

"I thought the SGC recruited you straight out of Afghanistan."

"They did. I was redeployed to the 4 SOS three days after I submitted the prospectus for my dissertation."

"And you've been ABD ever since?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Evan tries not to let it bother him, that he's everything but a paper - one very long, very important paper - away from graduation, but there's nothing he can do about it, not when battlefields make poor substitutes for research libraries. But Evan joined the Air Force for a reason and it wasn't to sit behind a desk and let other people put their lives on the line for his freedom. If he gets the chance, he'll finish it, but it's not the end of the world if he never can.

Radek frowns. "There are more PhDs on this base than there are in some universities. I am sure that we could manage to put together a thesis committee for you - if," he adds, going a little red, "that is something you still want."

"I have to write the damn thing first. Though," he adds, "I don't think my field's all that well represented in Atlantis' school of math and science."

"Ah. You are soft science major?"

"Philosophy," he admits.

Radek tries valiantly for the better part of a minute to keep a straight face before bursting into laughter. "That is adorable."

"No, it's not." He's a major in the United States Air Force. He's not supposed to be adorable. Not even to the guy he has the universe's worst school-yard crush on. Especially not to him.

"Yes, it is. But I will not hold it against you."

"Whatever you say, Doc."

"I am sorry," Radek says after he manages to catch his breath. "It is just the very last thing I expected for you to say. But you are right, such a subject may be hard to research here, unless you are willing to write your dissertation on Ancient philosophy."

"Yeah. I've thought about that. But two things: one, I don't speak Ancient-" Which is as far as Evan gets before his radio goes off. "This is Lorne."

Doctor Weir is on the other end, asking, "Have you seen Sheppard?" and sounding rather more harassed than usual.

"Not since this morning, but he did radio an hour or so ago to say he was beaming up to Daedalus," he tells her, shaking his head exasperatedly at Radek. The Colonel must be trying to shut paperwork in his direction again.

(Evan really should know better by now, but he'd honestly thought nothing of it when Sheppard had radioed to tell him he was going to Daedalus to see Hermiod, as the two were, for reasons not even Doctor McKay seemed very clear on, friends, and Sheppard always spent a great deal of time with the Asgard whenever Daedalus was in-galaxy. But the extremes the Colonel will go to in order to avoid certain things never ceases to surprise the Major.)

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Said he might be up there for a while too. Maybe I can help?"

"What you can do is send some SFs to the mess hall. It seems Colonel Sheppard told the Taranins he was an Ancient before pulling his disappearing act. The way things are going, we'll be lucky if we don't end up with more than a riot on our hands."

"I'm on it."

"Thank you," is Doctor Weir's clipped reply before he hears the double click of a disconnected line.

Evan sighs and rubs his hand across his face.

Radek shakes his head. "This is final straw: we are getting the Colonel an executive assistant on the next Daedalus run."

"The SGC will never approve it."

"You were barely keeping ahead of the paperwork when Captain Cadman was here to help you. But she has been gone for a month now and you are barely treading water. At this rate, you will drown under all of it before we finish repairs to Aurora and then where will we be?"

"Possibly less screwed than we are now," he says, pushing his chair back and heading for the door. "Apparently the Taranins found out about the Colonel being an Ancient."

Radek mutters something in his native language that, from the sound of it, probably would've had his mother washing his mouth out with soap for weeks afterwards had she heard it.

"You can say that again."


	43. Live In The Raw Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone... Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way."  
> Tony Kushner, Angles in America  
> \- - -   
> This was not a story I intended to write, so blame this on popkin16. She knows what she did. This is set in the 117 AL, which is 22 years before the Exodus, when Iohannes is 12 (and has been a pastor for 7 years) and Nicolaa de Luera is 6 (she won't be pastor for another 8 years). Translations include: autobirota is motorcycle; dulcissima is sweetest; hemiolia is a puddle jumper, and cervida is a deer.

Iohannes is twelve when he finds the autobirota. It's tucked away in a dusty corner of one of the old armories on the North Pier that even the servola don't bother to clean anymore.

It's the coolest thing he's ever seen.

He has no idea what it's doing in the armory. 'Lantis doesn't seem to have much of an idea either, though she seems to think that it has something to do with a Iacobus Abies Tirones, who did a lot of experimental work for the Guard before the Plague struck back on Terra some two hundred and fifty years ago. What the Lantean Guard might have wanted with autobirotae that long ago, Iohannes doesn't know, but it doesn't really matter. It's still an autobirota and he's still going to find a way to drive it.

The autobirota is clearly built for speed, with low, narrow wheels and an engine under the seat that could probably have broken two hundred miles per hour before he starts tweaking with it. The design's fairly stark too, with a chassis built to slice through air and nothing else. There's handholds at the front, toeholds at the back, a seat between, and not much else; driving it would be as much a test of mental discipline as of piloting skill.

The autobirota has also been sitting in a disused armory for a quarter of a millenia and needs a bit of work. Iohannes doesn't dare take it to Father or even Forcul, but he's learned a thing or two watching them both, so he rolls the machine to an even older workshop he's found further down the pier and fixes it up himself.

He and Nicolaa practically spent the entire five weeks it take camped out down there, though at six years old Nicolaa is too little to be of any real help. Mostly she just keeps him company, sneaking food for them from the commissary and reading aloud to him from whatever book she'd found looking through the Database that morning. Iohannes doesn't mind. Her parents are even less attentive than Father manages to be and someone has to keep an eye on her; Atlantis is full of dangers for the unweary, and Nicolaa doesn't have the benefit of nanoids in her head to steer her away from them.

And then the autobirota is finished.

"You can't possibly be thinking of driving that thing," Nicolaa says him when Iohannes announces his intention to do just that. She's sitting cross-legged on the worktop across from him, elbows perched on her knees and chin balanced in her palms, a riot of bright red curls obscuring the look of exasperation he knows is there.

"Why else would I fix it up?"

"To impress the rector?"

Iohannes snorts. "As if Father would be impressed by something like this," he says, circling around the fruit of his labors one more time. He wants with every fiber of his being to touch it, to run his fingers along the smooth planes and sharp lines and steal grips, but the last coat of paint is still drying and he doesn't want to ruin the perfect fluidity of the autobirota by being impatient now.

"At least Ianus notices you."

"Michaelis and Vesna notice you, dulcissima," he says, walking over to her worktop and hopping up onto the bench beside her. "They're just very busy."

"Your father is busy too, but he still finds time for you."

"Y'know as well as I do that's only when he wants something from me. And besides, he's rector. He can do whatever he wants with his time, unlike a pair of vicarii in a time of war."

"I hate this war, Licinus," she sighs, lifting her head and roughly brushing her hair out her face - and a few tears out of her eyes. "I just want the war to be over."

"I know, dulcissima."

"Maybe when the war's over Ianus will let you ride the autobirota on the mainland. It's supposed to be very big."

Iohannes gives a small laugh at that. "I think that, by the time the war is finally over, I won't need Father's permission to do much of anything."

"You shouldn't say things like that."

"The war's been going on for ninety years. It's probably going to go on a while more."

"I know," Nicolaa practically whispers, sounding tired and far older than her years. She scoots over a few inches and leans her head against his shoulder. "But I can dream."

He wraps an arm around her, and they sit like that until long after she drifts off.

Then, when the crimson red paint is finally dry, Iohannes lifts her up, carries her to the nest of blankets they've made in the adjoining room, and puts her to bed.

/Nicolaa's right, you know,/ Atlantis tells him once he's back in the machine shop and the door between the two rooms closed.

"About what part?"

/The others are never going to let you take the autobirota off-world./

"Then I won't take it off-world, will I?" Iohannes says, grinning cheekily at the ceiling.

/And,/ she adds, stressing the word, /you can't take a hemiolia to the mainland either. The Council will never allow it./

If possible, his smile grows wider as he runs his hands along the chassis of the autobirota from nose to tail, as one might a living creature. He knows that the autobirota isn't sentient - there's not enough code in its programing for that to ever be a possibility, - but once the motor's running, it's alive. "Then I won't take it to the mainland either."

Atlantis gives a very loud, audible sigh; he can sense the air recyclers ticking over for half the pier. /Try not to break anything. Or scratch our floors./

He raises an eyebrow, trying to sound offended and failing pretty terribly, "Like I'd ever do anything to hurt you, carissima."

/And wear a helmet./

"But-" Iohannes recalls a comment about the hardness of his head and the cushioning factor of his hair when this restoration had begun.

/Helmet,/ she says, punctuating the word with a sharp increase in volume of her song.

"You're a fucatrix when you're angry, y'know. Fine. I'll wear the stupid helmet. You remember where Nicolaa put it?"

/Bottom drawer, third cabinet from the left. You'll thank us for it later, trust us./

Five minutes later, Iohannes is rolling the autobirota out the door and towards one of Atlantis' straighter and more level halls, the ridiculous helmet strapped onto his head.

Five minutes after that, after Iohannes has gotten a feel for her, he opens the autobirota up and speeds down the corridors, laughing as he takes the corners and outright whooping as he jumps the the steps, 'Lantis opening and closing doors around him with timing that only an intelligentia artificialis could manage.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They don't catch him the first time.

Or the second.

Or the third.

But they catch him eventually - how was he to know one of specimens from the biology lab had gotten loose, let alone that it would somehow manage to find it's way all the way to the North Pier? The resulting accident resulted in the destruction of both autobirota and cervida, as well as what would hold the record for Iohannes' longest stay in the infirmary for over a decade.

'Lantis is right about one thing though: he does end up thanking her for forcing him to wear that helmet.


	44. Able To Flee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nec mortem effugere quisquam nec amorem potest. "
> 
> "No one is able to flee from death or love." 
> 
> Publilius Syrus  
> \- - -  
> I desperately wanted to make this fit into "Conurati," couldn't, and decided to post it as a drabble anyway. Takes place immediately after pt1.  
> Sumatriptan, also known as ilmitrex, is a medicine most often proscribed for migraines.

"Hey."

Carson's head snaps up, causing a pile of patient files that had been teetering on the edge of his desk to fall theatrically to the floor, joining the already tenuous stacks and white archive boxes there. "Rodney," his says wearily. "How are you?"

"I-" he begins. He tries to meet Carson's eyes, fails entirely, and sinks into the chair opposite, which is incongruously free of clutter. "I think it's safe to say that, uh, I am at times a petty, vindictive, even jealous man. I sublimate my own anxieties or feelings of inadequacy by creating a bubble of hostility around myself. I know that you, more than most, have had to bear the brunt of that hostility."

Carson goes ten shades of scarlet and fiddles with the cuff of his lab coat. "Rodney, you do nae have to apologise.

"Yes I do. Here's the thing," Rodney tries to meet his eyes again but can only reach the spot over Carson's left shoulder, but it's close enough that he's going to count it anyway. "You're a brilliant doctor, and a decent human being, and kind of my best friend, and you should not have had to endure the kind of abuse that you've taken from me the past few years. Especially this morning. I was..."

The flush is mostly gone now, though the doctor's still fiddling with the cuff of his coat. "You really do nae have to explain anything. I understand completely."

Which is, of course, when the like a heel feelings start setting in, because well, it's almost easy to forget that Cadman died not even two months ago, and that she and Carson had been dating. That she'd been pretty much Carson's whole world. That Carson had made Michael and Michael had killed Cadman (except that he hadn't, John had. But Carson had saved John's life after they'd first found him bleeding out in the cathedra, so maybe he's still a little bit responsible and, God, Rodney is now the only person in the whole universe who knew the truth of Cadman's death, and she isn't even two months in the ground).

The like a heel feelings continue for exactly thirty-eight seconds, and after that the anger comes charging back.

"He's not dead, Carson."

Carson gives him the same sad, pitying look that's been on the faces of everyone Rodney's so much as passed in the hall today. "No, he's nae, but the end result's the same."

"No, it's not. I mean, yes, John's gone, but he's not actually gone gone."

"Rodney-"

"John's coming back, Carson. I don't know how, I don't know when, but he's going to come back."

"Rodney-"

"He came back before."

"This is different."

"How?" he demands, jumping to his feet and waving his hands accusingly. "Why is it different this time? Why? Please, tell me, what information is everyone else privy to that I am not? Because, the way I remember it, I was the only other person in the room when John disappeared from it. Not you. Not Elizabeth."

Carson sighs. "I want to believe you, Rodney. I really do. But if the Colonel was coming back, would nae he have done it by now?"

"Maybe he can't."

There's a discrete cough over Rodney's earwig. He's had an open comm to Zelenka since the moment he entered the infirmary, in hopes of distracting Carson long enough for them to get their hands on John's blood sample. The cough, hopefully, means that Zelenka got the goods and he can end this horse and pony show.

"Look," Rodney says, "can we just go back to the part where I said I was sorry?"

With a sad but genuine smile, "Of course we can." Then, apparently unable to stop doctoring for more than a few minutes at a time, "Do you still have that headache? I left out some sumatriptan you can take if so."

"Yeah," Rodney says tiredly. "That would be great, actually." And then he pockets the pills, promises to get some rest, and high-tails it back to Aurora.

"Did you mean any of that?" Zelenka asks once they meet up again in the ship's sickbay, where Lorne is dozing lightly on one of the bio beds there, apparently having given in to soft, soothing song Rory's decided to sing ever since they embarked on this project, as if she knows just what they're up to and is trying to help them along. Or maybe she's just gotten over the worst of her impotent anger and has reached the point where all she can do is sing softly to herself and hope this all turns out to be a dream. Either way, it means his headache is finally starting to fade away, as Lorne's must be.

"Any of what?" he asks impatiently, wanting this to be over with as soon as possible. Rodney feels just so impossibly tired, and if there's any justice in the world he will be able to curl up in corner soon himself and hope this turns into nothing more than some terrible dream.

Maybe he'll take that sumatriptan after all.

"Your apology to Doctor Beckett, did you mean any of it?"

"Of course I did."

"Ah."

"Ah?"

Pushing his glasses up his nose, "It is nothing, just a thought."

"Well, go on then. Share with the class."

"I was just thinking that you can be quite a nice person when you set your mind to it."

"That is a cruel and vicious lie. Take it back," Rodney demands.

Zelenka doesn't and just moves on to Phase II of their plan to get John back.


	45. Once Again and Innumerable Times More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine?"
> 
> Friedrich Nietzsche  
> \- - -   
> At any point in the AJ 'verse really

He's lying when he says he doesn't remember. Iohannes spent ten thousand years - the better part of his life - in the cathedra. Every thought and datum and melody and error report and motif and system failure and change in pitch and implacable scream into the empty night is etched into his memory with the unchanging permanence that only the most terrifying things can ever manage.

But the mind is a resilient thing, especially the Alteran mind. It can bury even the most horrific memories so deep that even it can become blind to the secrets it hides - particularly when doing so is the only way to maintain a grasp, however slight, on sanity.

But nothing can stay hidden forever.

On those nights when the memories of those dark, unending nights slip in wisps and whispers into his dreams, Iohannes wakes drenched in cold sweat, silently screaming words that no other living soul knows the meaning of. And though he can wash away the evidence, and though he can wander Atlantis' halls until he's convinced himself it is nothing but a dream, the vague sense of terror always remains. Iohannes might not always recognize it as such or even note it's presence, but it's always there, the leitmotif of his life in this future he's found himself awakened into.

(Sometimes, though, he'll get a flash of it while he's wide awake: of darkness so complete he cannot remember the light, of cold so absolute his skin burns where exposed; of emptiness so thorough that he'd do anything never to be alone again, even if just talking to other people can hurt sometimes after so long in the silence. In those moments, it's all he can do to fake a smile, to breathe, to continue on like nothing's happening. And it's those moments Iohannes cannot forget.)


	46. Each Part and Tag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from."
> 
> Walt Whitman "The Song of Myself"  
> \- - -   
> Immediately following pt1 of "Idolon"

The next morning finds Iohannes sitting on the Gate Room steps, examining his gun as he waits for the IOA snoop, Woolsey, to arrive.

Strictly speaking, it's not a gun. It's an arcus: an energy weapon conceptually similar to a Terran maser, using pulses of artificially amplified electromagnetic radiation to inflict damage rather than copper-jacketed balls of lead. To be absolutely specific, it's a manuballista, which is more of a personal defence weapon than anything else - the P90 of Atleran weapons.

More than that, it's Iohannes' gun, the one Father had built specifically for him when he had first joined the Guard, the one which had been lost when Tirianus Fell. He's sure of it. He'd known that gun better than he knows himself. This one is identical in every way, from muzzle to heal.

This gun should not exist. And if it does exist anywhere in the universe, it is as a slag of rusted metal at the bottom of the sea, with the rest of the wreckage from Tirianus' uncontrolled descent into the Lantean Ocean. Yet here it is, in his hand, looking exactly like it had the moment before it had fallen from his hand in the seconds before G-LOC had set in.

Which begs the question: is it real?

It's obviously not. After all, he can hold it, and the only things Iohannes has been able to manipulate in any manner since he Ascended are things directly related to his own person. It, like his clothes, like his body itself, are only manifestations of his essence. It's little better than a hologram.

And yet, he's holding it, which one certainly cannot do with holograms. He cannot feel it, but it is there nonetheless, and when he'd taken it down to the range the other day it had certainly worked like a gun ought. So even if it's not real, per se, it's certainly acting that way.

Curious, he sets the gun down on the stair next to him. It stays on the stair next to him for all of six seconds before flickering out existence, only to reappear back in its holster a minute later. Iohannes repeats the experiment twice more, to the same result. But the fourth time...

The fourth time, the manuballista stays on the steps for seven seconds before reappearing in his holster.

/Carissima./

/Yes, pastor?/ Atlantis asks, the lights on the Gate Room stairs flickering with curiosity and concern.

/Time this for me, would you? Tell me if I'm imagining things or I'm actually seeing what I think I'm seeing,/ he says and repeats his experiment until seven seconds become eight.

/How are you doing that?/

/I dunno. But you can be damn sure I'm going to figure it out./


	47. Bad Wallpaper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper."
> 
> Nietzsche  
> \- - -  
> between pts 1 &2 of "Idolon"

"I dunno, carrisima," Iohannes muses, leaning with his arms against the railing on the uppermost floor of the atrium that makes up the base of the Central Spire. "How green are we talking about here?"

/Not very? It's more verdigris than true green./

This means exactly nothing to Iohannes, but he asks anyway, "And you wanna paint the atrium this - what was it called - nautical colour?"

/You don't like it?/

"I'm sure it'd be perfectly fine, 'Lantis," he assures her, lacking any opinion whatsoever.

/But not great,/ she pouts, dimming the lights directly over Iohannes' head dejectedly.

"I didn't say that."

/ You implied it./

Groaning, "It's your atrium, carrisima. You can paint it whatever colour your heart desires."

/But we want you to like it,/ she frets, wringing her nonexistent hands.

"'Lantis," Iohannes says solemnly, "you could be neon orange with purple pastel polka dots and I'd still love you."

The lights overhead return to normal brightness, albeit with great reluctance. /You're just saying that./

"Y'know that's not true."

/Then gives us an honest answer!/ Atlantis demands, all but stomping her feet like an angry child. /Nautical for the Central Atrium, yes or no?/

"Honestly? I dunno why you even bother asking me. Y'know I'm no good at these sorts of things. But if you really want my opinion, I say why not just go for another shade of blue? Blue always looks good on you, especially now that we're on the surface. Something that matches the ocean, maybe."

There is a lengthy, heavy pause. /You're absolutely no help,/ she huffs. /You should stick to playing with your matrices, pastor. We will ask our gener. He knows what we're talking about./

"You do that, carrisima," Iohannes replies flippantly, hoping to all the Descendants' false gods that she'd do just that. As almost an afterthought, he adds, "And stop calling Lorne that, it's just creepy." It's strange enough that Rory considers them her parents. She doesn't need to feed into the linter's delusions by calling Lorne their son-in-law.

Atlantis, being Atlantis, ignores his complaint and shifts her consciousness to better bother the newer pastor.

"Meretrix."

The nearest water ballast to burbles teasingly at him. Iohannes resists the urge to make primitive rude gestures at it. Instead, he goes back to staring out over the atrium and trying to imagine it painted in some shade of verdigris until he hears footsteps coming up the nearby stairs.


	48. Boundless Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it." 
> 
> Lord Macaulay  
> \- - -   
> after "Idolon"

"Colonel Sheppard."

"Mister Woolsey."

"Mind if I join you?"

"Knock yourself out," Iohannes says, patting an stretch of empty floor next to him.

"I think I'll stand, if that's alright with you."

Iohannes shrugs. He'd rather Woolsey went away entirely, but if there's one thing he's learned in life, it's that no one ever gets what they want.

"Teyla make sure you got settled in okay?"

"Miss Emmagen has been very hospitable. She even suggested I change into this uniform, though I have my doubts as to how much it will truly help me blend in here."

"Never underestimate how much blending in with the natives really helps."

"Be that as it may, I notice that you're not making an effort to," Woolsey says, gesturing at Iohannes' Guardsman uniform, which is rather conspicuous in it's impossible shades of white.

"Yeah, well, I'm having corporeality issues."

"So I've heard."

"I'm working on it."

"Oh?"

"It might take me a while."

"I sincerely hope you figure it out soon." At Iohannes' curious look, Woolsey explains, "There has been some talk back on Earth of having Colonel Caldwell replace you has military commander of Atlantis for the time being, and while I have no doubts of the Colonel's capability, I do not believe that removing you from command would suit anyone's best interests."

Surprised, Iohannes admits, "That's good to know." It's always good to have a causidicus in their corner, especially one who has sway with the IOA. "Though Major Lorne has agreed to continue acting in my place until I'm on my feet again, so to speak."

"There are those who worry that becoming a pastor like yourself may have compromised him."

Raising a single eyebrow in the way he's learned most Terrans find intimidating. "And are you one of them?"

"I've made no decision on the matter as of yet, though he seems to be handling the change quite well."

That's something at least. "So how long d'you think this little inquiry of yours will take?"

"A week, most likely. Two at the most."

"That long, huh?"

"These things take time, Colonel."

"They shouldn't," Iohannes tells him. "All you're doing is just reconfirming Elizabeta as praefecta."

"I'm afraid the situation is a little more complicated than that."

"No, it's not." He gestures idly at Woolsey. "Oh, you - the IOA - are trying to make it seem that way, but the truth is you can't replace Elizabeta without militarising the Expedition, not with the Wraith out for our blood. And you don't want to do that, because militarisation puts the American military in control, which scares the shit out of most the IOA nations, and me in command of Atlantis, which freaks the rest of them out.

"Not that the SGC would put me in command initially. No, they'll probably try to bring Caldwell in as praefectus, but he won't go for it. Not if it means replacing Elizabeta, to say nothing of the fact I think he respects me enough now not to take away my command.

"So they'll try to bring in someone else, but it won't stick. Not unless it's someone who's willing to see this city as more than just another outpost out in the universe for the sole benefit of Terra. And I gotta tell you, I didn't exactly get that warm and fuzzy sense of open-mindedness from most the legati I encountered on Terra.

"So, in the end, it'll have to be me in command if you choose to militarise and you guys don't want that. It's bad enough in your eyes that an alien not beholden to any of your silly little countries is in charge of the military presence in Atlantis. You don't want to give me any more power than you think I already have.

"So you'll stick with Elizabeta for now, because she's a civilian and vetted and tried and tested. But because you're causidici, you're going to make this process as slow and painful as possible, to make it seem like she's hanging onto her job by the skin of her teeth. Because you're too proud to admit that she made the right call, without any help from you."

"Sounds to me like you think Doctor Weir was right to attempt an alliance with the Wraith."

Iohannes snorts. "Nah, that was twelve kinds of stupid. But she thought it was the right thing to do and it was her call to make."

"And if you'd been in her place, Colonel?"

"I'd have shot that hive ship out of the sky before they could ever get a signal off. But I have the benefit of hindsight and a deep-seated hatred of the Wraith like you couldn't even begin to understand." He shrugs before standing.

"I see."

"Glad we could have this little chat," he says with his best fake smile before striding away with a false sense purpose.

Maybe he'll go find Rodney.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> his was going to be the start of pt2 of "Idolon" before my word processing issues. I rather like the new version better, but this part I liked enough to save and turn into a drabble.   
> That being said, causidici are lawyers, ambassadors, and negotiators in this verse; Woolsey, Elizabeth, and Teyla all qualify for the title. Praefectus is, again, the governor of Atlantis - ie, Elizabeth's position. For more on the rank/title system in the AJ 'verse, please follow the links [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/144272.html) and [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/104147.html#cutid1).


	49. Natural Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”
> 
> Marilyn Monroe  
> \- - -   
> This one was intended to be the start of a pseudo-porn drabble fo popkin16 hat never came close to completion. Or even porn. But here's what could be salvaged of it anyway. Takes place mentally during "Manes," but at any point during S3 really.

ohannes does not understand Terran reticence about sex. In his eyes - indeed, in the eyes of everyone he'd ever known prior to the Exodus, - sex is a perfectly natural act, no more different or unexpected than breathing. And while i can e an intensely private, passionate thing if done under the right circumstances, it's also one of the most impersonal things one can do with another person - if it's the wrong person.

For Iohannes' father, sex had been the most casual, unceremonious of things: more of a way of getting to know someone than to become close with them. If he felt the slightest bit of attraction to someone, he'd act upon it, and one of Father's greatest gifts had been finding something attractive in everyone. If the other person was uninterested, rare as that was, the subject would be dropped and that would be that.

Granted, there had always been exceptions, Father's relationship with Forcul being the primary one, but the end result was that there were only seven people Iohannes could say with absolute certainty that Ianus had never slept with. Five of these were first-degree blood relatives, himself included.

This had always been a fact of life for Iohannes: Father liked sex. Other people liked having sex with Father. So long as the sex didn't take place where he could see it, Iohannes could frankly care less about the whole thing.

But the Terrans...

The Terrans are s prudish bout sex that he sometimes wonders how their species manages to propagate at all.

Okay, that's a bit of an over-exaggeration. They just have a lot of taboos about it.

For instance, they don't like talking about it - unless it's gossip. Anything that falls within the realm of gossip is fair game, to the point where Iohannes has often thought that their society runs more on rumour and innuendo than it does on facts of any sort.

They don't like stumbling upon it either - unless it's on a television or movie screen, in which case they can be interested to the point of obsession and accepting of even the most implausible sexual encounters. And this isn't even counting the videos they dedicat solely o the act.

Then there are all their proscriptions about who can have it with whom, which have got to be the strangest of them all. It's almost enough to make him wonder why he bothers with them at all.

And then of course they do something spectacular, like implant themselves with nanoids or say just the right thing, and he remembers all over again why Terrans are his favourite Descendants.


	50. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In some sense, the advancement of our civilization is a race against time. On one hand, the march toward a type I planetary civilization may promise us an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity. On the other hand, the forces of entropy (the greenhouse effect, pollution, nuclear war, fundamentalism, disease) may yet tear us apart."
> 
> Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds  
> \- - -  
> This was meant to be the beginning of part 2 of "Manes" but gave me so much trouble it no longer is. Oh, an satore s the plural o sator, which is sower, as i the sower of seeds - and becomes seed ship ike SGU' Destiny n this verse. And so we get the first inclusion of the third series in this 'verse.

Vala makes a slow circuit of the room, examining the hologram from every angle before choosing a perch just to the left of the control console. "Well, I must say, I've achieved a whole new respect for the Ancients," she says after she sits, pulling one of her ponytails over her shoulder and working to braid it.

"Yes," Daniel agrees, paging open his notes. "Atlantis has got to be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Just imagine all the secrets hidden within it's walls - real meaning of life stuff."

"I actually meant Colonel Sheppard. Do you think all Ancients were like him, or is he just a particularly spectacular specimen?"

Daniel rolls his eyes. "Vala? Can you pleas not exually harass our colleagues for five minutes?"

"Why? He doesn't mind."

"His boyfriend does."

If this is news to Vala, she doesn't show it. "So? It's just a bit of fun. Neither of us is serious about it."

"Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that."

"What?" She looks up halfway through taking out her second braid, clearly surprised, "You think he is?"

"No, but i Rodney ver were to decide you were..."

"Oh, please. Like I've never had to deal with jilted lovers before."

"Why does that not surprise me?" he mutters under his breath. Then, louder, "I doubt you've ever faced someone quite like Rodney McKay. He looks harmless enough, but I've no doubt he could make your life a living hell if he ever decided you were a threat."

Vala continues tsking. "Daniel, darling, I've flirted with a lot of men in my time. I know which ones are serious about it and which ones are more trouble than they're worth. This Rodney fellow has nothing to fear from me and he knows it."

"Fine. But don't come crying to me when this all ends badly."

"Stop being so negative, Daniel, and get this show on the road. I want a chance to go exploring before we have go back on that nasty, cramped ship of yours for another three weeks of absolute boredom."

Daniel snorts. "Stop talking for a few minutes and I will."

She gives him the goa'uld version of the finger and goes back to braiding her hair.

He turns to the hologram of Morgan le Fey, which has been blinking apathetically at them for the last several minutes, and approaches her control console.

"Hello," the hologram says.

"Yes, hello. We're looking to learn about the history of the Ancients, specifically about the time they spent in the Milky Way galaxy."

"Please specify a time period. You may do so verbally, or you can enter your selection manually on the console in front of you."

"Can you just start at the beginning?"

"Yes," it says baldly, "but be aware for future sessions that manual input is required for most system interaction."

The hologram changes suddenly, the image of Morgan le Fay shrinking and moving upstage while a giant image of the Milky Way, silvery bright in all it's ethereal glory, appears overhead.

"The beginning of the Alteran presence in Avalon has it's roots in th Schisma etween ourselves and th Haeretici," it narrates, her voice smooth and oddly low-pitched for a woman's. "After we were forced to abandon the home galaxy, the grea urbes-naves ravelled across the universe for one million years, accompanied only by a handful o satores, which served as scouts and escorts. When the decision was made to end our great journey through space..."


	51. Music

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Without music, life would be a mistake."
> 
> Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols  
> \- - -   
> This was meant to be yet another start to pt 2 of "Manes," but never got any further than this. Well, it did, but none of that was even salvageable This was.

Space is silent.

The expanses between stars are cold and black, far from anything any sane person would call home. But even in the midst of these there are spots of warmth and sparks of heat - a passing comet, perhaps, or the growing light of a distant sun.

The silence, however, is constant. There is the drone of the engines and the dull thud of boot upon metal interspersed with the clatter of keys and the occasional human voice, but for the most part it is remarkably like Stanley Kubrick's vision of space travel. More crew members and greater distances involved than most people at NASA - then or now - could imagine, of course, but the guiding principles of silence and starkness are the same.

That being said, it takes Sam a full ten minutes to notice the classical music that quickly fill Odyssey's weapons lab after take-off, soft and subtle enough that it seems to blend in with the workings of the engines and the vibration of the deck plates, becoming one with all the small noises that make up a starship.

"What's that you're humming?" she wants to know as soon as she realises where the sound's coming from.

"What?" McKay asks, ninety-three percent of his concentration still on his yield calculations.

"The song that you're humming, what is it?"

"I'm not humming anything."


	52. An Endless Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You shall go with me... Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, but joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
> 
> WB Yeats Land of Heart's Desire  
> \- - -  
> This was meant to be yet another start to pt 2 of "Manes," but never got any further than this... oddly enough, this is the version without hat basically amounts to massive Atlantis scenery porn. Which just got creepy, even for me.

The ocean is an unbroken pane of silver glass beneath them a Odyssey pproaches for her second landing in the city.

It has taken them three days of limping to return to Lantea, the damage dealt to them by the Wraith and the black hole itself doing the 304 no favours, but the ship seems to glide languidly through the sky the closer she gets to the city, as if her only care in the world is to admire - and be admired by - Atlantis. It's a stupidly ridiculous idea, of course. I Odyssey ad been Rory or eve Orion, then, yes, maybe. Bu Odyssey s as bland and lifeless as they come. She has no personality, straight out of the factory that she is. The smell of new paint still clings to certain corners, underneath the stench of melted plastic and burned rubber.

But Atlantis...

Atlantis is the most wonderful thing to ever exist in the universe, even if he can't hear her voice. There's more life in her song then there is in a whole fleet of 304s - or, hell, some the people Rodney's known over the years.

More than that, though, she' home, and so Rodney abandon Odyssey's engine room to her own techs the moment he hears the faintest of Atlantis' song start to whisper in the back of his mind. He doesn't even bother heading for one of the observation decks - they're bound to be crowded with all sorts of Pegasus first-timers, - choosing instead to make for the nearest airlock. As beautiful and miraculous as Atlantis is to see from the outside, he just wants to be home again.

Sam must have the same idea, or, at least, a similar one because she's already at the airlock when he gets there. "Hey McKay," she says brightly, if tiredly. "How are things going with the sublights?"

"Terrible. For some reason you'd think the designers never meant for them to be used that close to the event horizon of a black hole. Oh wait," he snaps his fingers, "they didn't. Silly me for thinking they'd that they'd actuall equip he ship they sent for that specific purpose to do actually do what it's supposed to." Rodney sighs and lets his hands fall loudly to his side. Exhausted himself, he asks, "What about you? You get the sensors up and running again or are we still flying blind?"

"Not blind, more like with a really thick pair of glasses. I think we're going to end up having to rip out the wiring and replace at least half the antennae before we can safely head back."

"I'll have Radek assign Doctor Esposito and her team t Odyssey o help. They've had enough experience doing just that fo Orion nd Rory," he explains, "to be halfway decent at it. Should speed up your repairs by a day or two."

She smirks at him. "Ah, Rodney. That sounded almost like you were trying to be nice."

"Please," Rodney snorts. "You say that like I eat the flesh of disgruntled minions for breakfast and grind their bones into my coffee. Which," he says loudly as a few o Odyssey's knuckle-draggers turn the corner, "I do. Often, and without remorse."

Sam ducks her head, whether to hide her rolling eyes or widening smile, he can't be sure. "Whatever you say, McKay."

"Go ahead and laugh. I don't know about your minions, but most of mine can't be trusted as far as I can throw them not to make a mess of something my four-year-old niece could fix with her eyes closed and both hands tied behind her back."

"You know, you might get better results if you stopped calling the minions. Or comparing them to preschoolers."

Rodney pishes and punches the airlock controls the moment he feel Odyssey et down. "I'll start respecting them as human beings when I get the indication they have a higher IQ score than a gnat."

"Individually or collectively?"

"Either. I'm not picky."

Sam snorts as she follows him down the gangplank.


	53. Lonely Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.” 
> 
> Frank Herbert _Dune Messiah_  
>  \- - -
> 
> So this was supposed to be the start of the next installment, but it just didn't work out. I like it too much to do away wit completely, so here it is.

"Well, that's four days I'm never getting back," Rodney huffs as soon as they rematerialise in Atlantis' Gate Room.

John snorts, already unbuckling his P90 from the sling that only appears on his brigandine when he needs it. "It wasn't that bad," he insists, but it's a half-hearted declaration at best - in part because the last four days really have been some of the most boring they've ever had the displeasure of enduring as a team, but also because most of John's concentration is on his gun. The gun flickers under John's stare, transforming from an FH Herstal P90 into his beloved Colt M1911, and it's this that he slides into the holster that has suddenly appeared on his thigh, looking unduly pleased with himself.

Rodney rolls his eyes at the sight. It had stopped being impressive after about the third time John had done it, though even he had to admit it's utility. "Please. I don't think I've ever been so mind-numbingly bored in my entire life - and that includes any number of Air Force R&D briefings you're willing to name."  
An honest-to-god twinkle appears in John's eyes. "Yeah," he smirks. "I pretty much tuned everything out after the introductions."

"Yeah. I noticed. And don't think I'm not holding that against you."

"You shouldn't."

"Oh? And why not, hmm?"

John waggles his eyebrows in a way that's probably meant to be seductive, but instead manages to make him look more ridiculous than usual in the crazy half-Ancient, half-Expedition getup he'd taken to wearing ever since he figured out how to change how his clothes manifested.

He snorts, about to ask how exactly he plans to follow through on that promise, what with his current tangibility issues and all, but never gets the chance, as Elizabeth is by this point standing on the balcony outside her office, looking down at them with a bemused smile on her face.

"Gentlemen," she asks, voice warm and vaguely maternal, "how were the negotiations?"

"Good," John announces.

"Boring, more like."

"And boring," he concedes, following Rodney up the Gate Room steps to the Control Room proper. "But nobody tried kidnapping or killing anybody, so I think everyone there is pretty serious about this whole Pegasus Confederacy idea, though there's still a lot that's going to have to be worked out before we put pen to paper - but that's more your area of expertise than mine."

Elizabeth's smile brightens, deepening the laugh lines. "At least they're willing to talk. That's always the hardest part of any negotiation: getting all the parties to the table."

"Yeah, I don't think that's going to be a problem here." Quite the contrary, really: The negotiations they'd just come from had only included the Genii, Taranins, and Athosians, each race had spoken of other planets that might wish to send delegations when it came time for formal treaty talks. "Though I think John promised to find the Athosians a new planet."

"John?"

"What? Halling made the point that they shouldn't be reliant on us for access to a porta. And we did find Pryderi for the Taranins after they lost their planet, so it's not like I promised them anything we haven't done before."

Her eyes go briefly heavenward. "Well, at least it wasn't C4 this time."

"You're just going to keep bringing that up, aren't you?" John asks, almost pouting as he crosses his arms in front of his chest.

"Under the circumstances? Yes," she tells him without malice.

"That hurts, Elizabeta. It really, truly does."

Rodney rolls his eyes before checking the safety on his own gun and setting it down on the nearest console. "Tone it down, Kirk. You've already got this alien princess on your side."

It's John's turn to roll his eyes this time. "I'm just saying, you try to trade plastic explosives for Tava beans one time and nobody ever lets you forget it."

"Oh, like you've let me forget-"


	54. We Who Dwell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not to do poetry. I really, really don't. But this ended up being the end result of trying to write something for Atlantis to sing in a future installment and, well, here it is.

We still remember, we who dwell   
In the endless sea of stars,  
On this world of waters untamed,  
Unbound by the foundations of the earth.

We long to return, we lost travelers,   
To the world that gave us birth,   
To touch a hand to her soft green hills,   
And dance among her bright blue skies.

For though we have numbered every star,  
And tasted the fruits of every foreign world,  
It is still of Loegria our children sing,   
And it is still for her soft waters we long.


	55. Of the Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.” 
> 
> EM Forester, Howard’s End  
> \- - -  
> Any time in S3. A snippet I wrote to start the next installment of the AJ verse and liked too much to get rid of entirely.

Atlantis is never silent.

Not anymore, anyway. Ascension has unlocked all the dark corners of Iohannes' mind, allowing him to remember with unmitigated clarity every precise detail of every single moment he'd much rather forget - including each and every second of the ten thousand two hundred three years he'd spent in the cathedra, taking the long, slow journey to this future he's found himself wakened into - not that the urbs-navis has ever been truly silent, not since she became self-aware anyway. But there is a vast difference between the city's slumbering song, so quiet and anguished and slow, and her current choice of leitmotifs.

And so Iohannes is taking the time just to listen to her song for a while. He really should be using the time to work on his 'Tactile Dysfunction,' as Rodney's recently taken to calling it, but there are only many hours one can contemplate one's hypothalamus before the urge to do irreparable ocular damage takes hold. So he's taking the day off, using his time he normally would've spent meditating to do other things. Like stand in on the uppermost balcony of the Central Atrium, watching the sun sink beneath the horizon and listening to Atlantis' ceaseless song.


	56. The Most Destructive Arsenal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Thoughts become weapons. Philosophies are distinct reasons for war. Good intentions are the most destructive arsenal of all.”
> 
> Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, Dune: The Machine Crusade   
> \- - -  
> Anytime during S3. Yet another possible start for the next installment in the 'verse

/Everything will be alright,/ Atlantis promises, her voice shooting and gentle as it brushes against his mind. /You will see, pastor./

Iohannes leans his head back against the wall, eyes closed, and lets out a long breath. "You don't know that, carrisima. For all anyone knows, I've only made things that much worse."

/We know you./

"There is that," he concedes, concentrating on his breathing.

He has no need to breathe, but it makes him feel less on edge, less like his essence is going to come pouring out of his body in something akin to a nuclear explosion if he so much as sneezes. (Not, of course, that he has the capability to sneeze - there's a lot more to respiration than one might think - but the idea remains the same. He's a ticking time bomb who shouldn't be trusted around anything that might set him off, be it would-be worshippers or strong breezes.)

But breathing helps somewhat. It reminds him that he's still in control of himself, however tenuous that control may actually be.

/You are a good man. You are selfless and righteous and kind. You gave ten thousand years of your life to protect us, and gave the Terrans a home when they were cut off from theirs. You have all but given your life in service to others - though not for lack of trying. You should not doubt yourself so much./

"Good men still make mistakes."

/All people make mistakes. If you didn't, you would truly be the god the Descendants wish you to be./

He opens his eyes long enough to give the darkened ceiling a half-hearted glare. "Yes, 'cause that makes me feel so much better."

/It was meant to,/ the city says gleefully, wilfully taking his words at face value. Then, more soberly, /We know how you fear falling prey to Haeresis, but it will not take you if you do not let it./

Iohannes, eyes closed once more, gives 'Lantis a tight-lipped smile. "I wish I could be the person you think I am."

/You have always been him, pastor, whether you have believed so or not./

He snorts but doesn't say anything. He just continues to focus on the slow rise and fall of his diaphragm, the steady draw of air in and out of his nose, and tries to make himself believe he's doing the right thing.


	57. Reaffirm Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in the fundamental rights of sentient beings, in the dignity and worth of all lifeforms, in the equal rights of members of planetary systems large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interstellar law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of living on all worlds..."
> 
> Star Trek: Voyager, "The Void"  
> \- - -  
> Between "Imperator" and "Daemones"

Elizabeta sighs, setting down her tablet.

"What appears to be the problem?" Teyla asks, looking away from her own, where she's reading a similar copy of the document that appears to be causing Elizabeta so much misery.

"I just realised why this sounds familiar."

"Is it not intended to be based on the foundational treaty of your planet's United Nations?"

"Yes, but more than that, this is almost a word-for-word copy of the charter of the United Federation of Planets, which itself is based on the United Nations Charter."

"I was not aware your galaxy had a coalition of planets such as we are seeking to form."

"We don't - it's from Star Trek."

"I see."

Iohannes feels both women turn to favour him with looks of varying levels of exasperation from across the Conference Room, but does his utmost best to ignore them. They are the ones who suggested he draw up a first draft of the treaty that the various delegations will be voting on next month. They never said it had to be original.

"Do you care to explain yourself, Colonel?"

He tries to be strong. He tries to concentrate on his own computer, upon which he is gaily going through the remainder of the UN Charter and replacing the Terra-centric words with more Pegasus-friendly versions, but he's never been able to ignore Elizabeta when her voice holds that level of disappointment. Shout at her, yes, or tiredly explain to her his more... expansive... view of the universe, but never ignore. Iohannes has yet to decide if it's a personal failing of his or a particular skill of hers.

He looks up. "Don't you guys have some saying about reinventing the wheel? Like how you shouldn't try it?"

She sighs again. "If you're not even going to make an effort..."

"This is me making an effort."

"Plagiarising forty-year-old science fiction is hardly what I call making an effort, John."

"First of all," he points out, "the exact wording of the Federation Charter doesn't show up until season seven of Voyager, which only makes it five years old. And, more importantly, Terrans have been copying Alterans for ages, so a little bit of plagiarism now and then on my part is only fair."

"Somehow I doubt their lawyers will feel the same way if they ever find out."

"Oh, you never know. Maybe they'll be honoured."

"Change it," she says archly.


	58. Computers are Ridiculous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Church-Turing thesis, Theodore Roszak version “Computers are ridiculous. So is science in general.”  
> \- - -  
> Scenes that almost began part 2 of "Angelus," take one. (aka Jeannie is a miserable bastard to write).

"This code is a mess."

"Colonel Carter has written over a hundred and thirty patches to the dialling program since we installed the new firmware," Walter agrees wearily from his console in the SGC's Control Room.

"And that was what?" he asks. "When the Russians leased the Alpha Gate back to us, right?"

"Yessir. July 2001."

Rodney shakes his head. "A hundred thirty patches in five years? That's insane. What you guys need to do is rip this thing up and start fresh with a new dialling program. Or, better yet, take the DHD from one of the planets you're harvesting Stargates for the Intergalactic Gate Bridge from and install it here. I mean, don't get me wrong, the fact that Sam was able to create a dialling interface at all is in and of itself nothing sort of astounding. No one's saying otherwise. But the Gate wasn't meant to be used without a dialling device and, try as we might, our tech isn't anywhere near that of the Ancients'. Even with all these patches, you're still ignoring over half the feedback signals."

"I've been telling General Landry that for years now," Sam says as she comes down the stairs from the Briefing Room, Jeannie trailing somewhat dazedly behind, "but he doesn't want to risk breaking the Gate while we're at war."

He snorts. "The Gate's going to break one way or another unless you update your dialling program."

"I know, but he does have a point. We don't want to be trapped on-world if the situation with the Ori goes south."

"True enough, I guess, but you're still asking for trouble." Rodney turns to his sister. "Hey, you ready to go? If we don't leave soon, we run the risk of getting a busy signal, and believe me when I say I don't want to have to stick around here longer than I have to. Unlike some people," he gives Sam a meaningful glare, "I have actual work to do."

Jeannie looks out at the Gate Room leerily. "Is it safe?"


	59. Go On. Go On.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "That is so human. Where angels fear to tread. Even now, standing on the edge. It's that feeling you get, yeah? Right at the back of your head. That impulse. That strange little impulse. That mad little voice saying 'Go on. Go on. Go on. Go over. Go on.' "
> 
> The Tenth Doctor  
> \- - -   
> Scenes that almost began part 2 of "Angelus," take two. (aka Jeannie is very much a miserable bastard to write).

"Is it safe?" Jeannie asks, watching the Gate leerily as it begins to dial.

Rodney rolls his eyes. "Our bodies are being demolecularized, transmitted over three million light years through subspace, and rematerialised on the other side. 'Safe' doesn't exactly fit anywhere into the equation. But if you mean 'unlikely to be actively harmed,' then you're in luck."

"'Actively' harmed?"

"Well, there's a small chance a solar flare might send us to some point in the past - or the future, I suppose, - or that we might get stuck in the Gate, but that almost never happens."

"'Almost'?" she repeats shrilly.

"Don't worry. There are so many safety protocols built into this thing that we haven't figured out what all of them are supposed be for."

"How is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"I dunno, Jeannie," he sighs, shouldering his laptop bag and walking up the ramp towards the newly established wormhole. He's still annoyed he'd been dragged out of bed do nothing more than sit around and wait for his sister to finish her paperwork and make her way through medical. It wouldn't have been so bad if he could've caught a nap somewhere, or if the SGC's coffee wasn't so inherently shitty, but he couldn't and it was, so Rodney officially has no patience for his sister's worrywart tendencies right now. "You signed up for this. You can either step through the Gate now or spend three weeks on the Daedalus when it leaves the day after tomorrow. Personally, I prefer the Gate, but what the hell do I know about your home life? If you wanna spend an extra month away from Madison and the English major, that's you're business." And, with that, he walks through the Gate.

Atlantis welcomes him back with open arms.


	60. Beyond My Comprehension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension."
> 
> The Brothers Karamazov  
> \- - -   
> [This](http://atlantisheadcanon.tumblr.com/post/42513727302/a-statue-of-janus) is the pic had in mind for the statue. Because, of course, I end up writing things like this instead of working on "Angelus" or getting back on the treadmill.

So the thing is, Iohannes really dislikes anthropologists. It's not without reason. He's known a lot over the years - Before, most of his maternal grandfather's family had been historicii - and all of them seem to have this incredibly stupid idea that everything about a society can be determined by a few artefacts and boiled down into some easily digestible monograph. He actively dislikes anyone who thinks they can understand anything without knowing all the facts about it. (His second-most hated profession is psychology, because they at least limit their claims of full understanding to one person at a time.)

But, anyway, Iohannes dislikes anthropologists, for justifiable reasons.

He really dislikes Terran anthropologists, mainly because they all seem to want to study him.

He really, really dislikes Daniel Jackson for a whole host of reasons unrelated to his profession, but the fact that he is an anthropologist completely undoes any goodwill the Terran may have garnered with him for figuring out the address at allowed the Expedition to find him. It's just a fact of life. Unfortunate for Jackson, perhaps, but a fact of life nonetheless. And, after the whole business with Ganos Lal, mutual.

So Iohannes is surprised when Jackson shows up at his door early in the morning the day after their confrontation.

"Hey Colonel, I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Any break from mediating is fine by me. Unless," he adds, crossing his arms in the doorway, "you're here to talk about what Ganos told you some more, 'cause I'm really not in the mood for that."

Jackson rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "Yeah. Sorry about that. Jack keeps telling me I get over-invested in-"

"I'm going to stop you right there before you say something that makes me have to shut the door on your foot."

This gets Iohannes a sheepish grin. "Probably a good idea. Anyway, I know it doesn't make up for anything," he gestures at the two Marines lingering nearby to set the packing crate they're carrying down by Iohannes' door. "but I was thinking about it before we left and didn't know if you had anything of your father's from after he left Atlantis. I know it's not exactly his and probably isn't anywhere close to accurate, but..." Jackson opens the crate, revealing a small, two-headed sculpture. "It's a replica of a statue of Janus at a museum in New York – or, at least, the god my ancestors worshipped him as. He was supposed to be a god of transitions, which is why he has two heads – one looking into the future and one into the past. The month of January is named after him. I know it's not much, but..."

Iohannes runs a finger along the join where the two heads meet and closes the lid. Neither of the faces look a thing like Father, but... "Thank you," he says gruffly.

Jackson's smart enough to leave not long after that.

* * *

The statue stays in it's crate for several weeks, largely forgotten. Iohannes only remembers it again when he's unpacking their belongings in the suite on the edge of the South-East Pier he and Rodney now share.

He puts it on the dining room table, meaning to find someone to pawn it off on later, but the statue ends up taking permanent residence there, one head standing sentry over the entryway to their new quarters, the other looking out over the ocean.

Rodney never mentions it. It's kind of small and they never eat there anyway, so it's not really in the way. They just pile their scientific journals and gun magazines and DVD cases on the table around it and never mention it, and it's one of the things Iohannes loves him for.


	61. Let Me Be Empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "let me be empty / and weightless and maybe / I'll find some peace tonight / in the arms of the angel."
> 
> Sarah Mclachlan "Angel"  
> \- - -   
> I wanted a last drabble before I left - I leave tomorrow morning, but I'll post what I have of the next bit of "Angelus" tonight, so I'll fill in the details there. Anyway, a nice, kinda sweet, kinda ominous one before I go.

He knows that something is wrong.

It's easy to pretend that nothing's wrong. That nothing's changed. That he's still the same man he was before he Ascended.

But he's not. How could he be? He is a hurricane disguised as a man. His flesh is a façade, formed of light and just a fragile. If ever that flesh were to fall away and even a sliver of the power contained in him were to escape-

-well, there's no imagining the consequences. Elizabeta has already paid them.

He'd told her it would be a bad idea to trust him.

But it's easy to pretend. The knowledge, the information, the understanding – it's all beyond mortal understanding. So long as he pretends to be mortal, it's beyond his understanding as well.

And he can pretend.

It's easiest in moments like these, on their rare lazy mornings when they're allowed to sleep until the sunlight starts to filter into their bedroom, as soft and sleepy as they are. When Rodney's drifting on the edge of wakefulness and Iohannes is in a trance-like state from meditating that vaguely resembles sleep. When he can burrow into Rodney's side, head pillowed on his chest or buried in his neck, and pretend that he really is mortal, that he's really just waking from a dream of doing just this; that they really can do this for the rest of their lives and have it mean something.

It's so easy to forget the truth in moments like these, when he wakes Rodney with soft kisses on whatever expanse of bare skin he can reach without moving too far. When he can lazily kiss and touch and explore until Rodney wakes enough to whisper, "Morning," before meeting his mouth with his own and turning Iohannes' sleepy kisses into ones of languid intent. When nothing else matters but lips and hands and desire, and the fate of the universe isn't in balance.

That's not why he does it, of course. Iohannes loves Rodney. He wants to be with him for the rest of the Terran's life, however long he can make it, and genuinely fears what he'll do the day Rodney actually dies. He wants to make a life with him – a family even, if it were somehow possible. But even he has to admit it's a nice side effect.

He never quite manges to forget, though. Not completely. Not one hundred percent. And even during these quiet, stolen moments, Iohannes' can't help but remember something is wrong with him. Something has changed. He doesn't know exactly what, but it's true. He just hopes to all the Descendants' false gods that nobody – especially Rodney – ever sees it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DO NOT PANIC! THIS IS NOT THE END.
> 
> But I leave for Basic Training on 2/12, and I will be without internet starting tomorrow morning and extending through mid-May. As a result THIS IS THE LAST DRABBLE for this "The Paradox of War." When I return (and I will), I will create a new drabble collection that you will be able to find it under the series page.


End file.
